Editorial: Our city's public transportation agency is facing a budget shortfall. The fastest growing part of the budget has been...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
Editorial: Our city's public transportation agency is facing a budget shortfall. The fastest growing part of the budget has been employee retirement benefits, which are exceptionally generous. Unless the budget shortfall is resolved, transportation service will be cut, and many transportation employees will lose their jobs. Thus, it would be in the employees' best interest for their union to accept cuts in retirement benefits.
Which of the following is an assumption the editorial's argument requires?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| Our city's public transportation agency is facing a budget shortfall. |
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| The fastest growing part of the budget has been employee retirement benefits, which are exceptionally generous. |
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| Unless the budget shortfall is resolved, transportation service will be cut, and many transportation employees will lose their jobs. |
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| Thus, it would be in the employees' best interest for their union to accept cuts in retirement benefits. |
|
Argument Flow:
The argument starts with a problem (budget shortfall), identifies the cause (expensive retirement benefits), warns of consequences (service cuts and job losses), then concludes what should be done (cut retirement benefits).
Main Conclusion:
Employees should accept cuts to their retirement benefits because it's in their best interest.
Logical Structure:
The author argues that since generous retirement benefits are causing budget problems, and budget problems lead to job losses, employees should accept benefit cuts to avoid losing their jobs entirely. This creates a 'lesser of two evils' logic - better to have reduced benefits than no job at all.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Assumption - We need to find what must be true for the argument's conclusion to work. The editorial concludes that employees should accept retirement benefit cuts because it's in their best interest.
Precision of Claims
The argument makes specific claims about budget shortfall, retirement benefits being the fastest growing expense, consequences of not fixing the budget (service cuts and job losses), and what's in employees' best interest.
Strategy
To find assumptions, we look for gaps in the logic that could falsify the conclusion while keeping the stated facts intact. The author jumps from 'budget problems lead to job losses' to 'cutting retirement benefits is in employees' best interest.' We need to identify what must be true to make this leap valid.
This choice suggests the union shouldn't accept cuts unless it's in employees' best interest. But this actually supports the argument rather than being an assumption the argument requires. The editorial is trying to prove that cuts ARE in their best interest, so this choice describes a principle the author would agree with, not an assumption needed to make the argument work.
This says cutting services and jobs is the ONLY feasible way to resolve the shortfall. This is too strong and not required. The argument only needs there to be a reasonable threat of cuts and job losses if the shortfall isn't resolved - it doesn't need this to be the only possible solution. Alternative solutions could exist without weakening the argument.
This states that generous retirement benefits are generally good for employees. While this might be true in normal circumstances, the argument doesn't require this assumption. The argument acknowledges there's a trade-off situation where keeping generous benefits might lead to job losses, so whether benefits are normally good for employees is irrelevant to the specific conclusion.
This is the critical assumption. The entire argument hinges on the idea that cutting retirement benefits would actually help solve the budget problem. If cutting benefits wouldn't help resolve the shortfall, then there's no logical reason to believe that accepting cuts would prevent service reductions and job losses. Without this assumption, the connection between the proposed solution (benefit cuts) and avoiding the consequences (job losses) completely breaks down.
This describes what the union will or won't do, but the argument doesn't require any assumption about the union's future behavior. The editorial is making a case for what the union SHOULD do, regardless of what they actually will do. The argument stands or falls on its logical merits, not on predictions about union decision-making.