Necessary Assumption
Maude is incessantly enganging in diatribes against people who are materialistic. But her hypocrisy is evinced by the sentimental treatment of the watch her grandmother gave her. She certainly is very fond of the watch --- she worries about damaging it; in fact she always sets it carefully in a special box before going to be.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
A. Possessions that come from relatives are treated with better care than those that do not.
B. Sentimental attachment to a single possession indicates being materialistic.
C. People who care about material things in general tend to take special care of all their possessions.
D. Maude's watch is not the only material thing she especially cares for.
E. People who are not materialistic tend to have merely sentimental attachments to things.
B.
Rita: The original purpose of government farm-subsidy programs was to provide income stability for small farmers, but most farm-subsidy money goes to a few farmers with large holdings. Payments to farmers whose income, before subsidies, is greater than $100,000 a year should be stopped.
Thomas: It would be impossible to administer such a cutoff point. Susidies are needed during the planting and growing season. Still, farmers do not know their income for a given calendar year until tax returns are calculated and submitted the following April.
Which of the following, if true, is the strongest counter Rita can make to Thomas's objection?
A. It has become difficult for small farmers to obtain bank loans to be repaid later by money.
B. Having such a cutoff point would cause some farmers whose income would otherwise exceed $100.000 to reduce their plantings.
C. The income of a farmer varies because weather and market prices are not stable from year to year.
D. If subsidy payments to large farmers were eliminated, the financial condition of the government would improve.
E. Subsidy cutoffs can be determined on the basis of income for the preceding year.
E.
Compared to nonprofit hospitals of the same size, investor-owned hospitals require less public investment in the form of tax breaks, use fewer employees, and have higher occupancy levels. It can, therefore, be concluded that investor-owned hospitals are a better way of delivering medical care than nonprofit hospitals.
Which of the following, if true, mouse undermines the conclusion drawn above?
A. Nonprofit hospitals charge more per bed than do investor-owned hospitals.
B. Patients in nonprofit hospitals recover more quickly than those with compatible illnesses in investor-owned hospitals.
C. Nonprofit hospitals do more fundraising than investor-owned hospitals.
D. Doctors at nonprofit hospitals earn higher salaries than do similarly qualified doctors at investor-owned hospitals.
E. Nonprofit hospitals receive more donations than do investor-owned hospitals.
B
Several studies have shown that hospitals are not all equally successful: patients are much more likely to die in some of them than in others. Since the hospitals in the studies had approximately equal per-patient funding, differences in the quality of care provided by hospital staff are probably responsible for the differences in mortality rates.
Which one of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the conclusion drawn above?
A. The staff in some of the hospitals studied had earned more advanced degrees, on average than the staff in the other hospitals.
B. Patient populations vary substantially in average severity of illness from hospital to hospital.
C. The average number of years that staff members stay on at a given job varies considerably from one hospital to another.
D. Approximately the same surgical procedures were performed in each of the hospitals covered in the studies.
E. Mortality rates for hospital patients do not vary considerably from one region of the county to another.
B.