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Hi. I am having trouble understanding the answers in the Kaplan 2008 book for a few questions. Here they are:

1) Attempts to blame the mayor's policies for the growing inequality of wages are misguided. The sharp growth in the gap in earnings between college and high school graduates in this city during the past decade resulted from overall technological trends that favored the skills of more educated workers. Nor can the mayor's response to the problem be criticized, for it would hardly be reasonable to expect him to attempt to slow the forces of technology.

Which of the following, if true, casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion drawn in the last sentence above?

Correct Answer: The mayor could have initiated policies that would have made it easier for less-educated workers to receive the education necessary for better paying jobs.

Why I Didn't Choose This Answer: So the PROBLEM is the discrepancy in wages between people without higher education and with it. Therefore, having MORE people receive higher education does NOT address this problem (as the discrepancy persists) and the last sentence of the argument is not refuted. What am I missing here?


2) Due to the extreme poverty in Italy during the time period between 1870 and 1930, almost 4 1/2 million Italian--most of whom were farmers--immigrated to the United States. The wave from Italy reached its height in the 10-years span between 1920 and 1930, when Italians comprised 12% of the total number of immigrants admitted to the United States. The majority of these Italian immigrants were from Southern Italy and Sicily, and upon their arrival, they settled along the East Coast, with the heaviest concentrations in cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, though some made the arduous trip across the country to settle in Norther California.

The statements above, if true, support which of the following?

Correct Answer: At the turn of the 19th century, the southern portion of Italy was the country's prominent agricultural region.

Why I Didn't Choose This Answer: This book has hammered it into my head that I should not choose an answer like this if there could be other explanations. Even if it is a reasonable assumption. For instance, another answer is "The strong Euro dollar has contributed to the sharp decline in Italian immigrants" and the book says, yes, this is probably true, but there is no evidence to support this in the passage. Well, there is certainly a lack of evidence to support the correct answer as well, in my opinion. What's to say that the agricultural trade of the time in those areas was bad, so even though agriculture wasn't huge in those areas, all of the farmers were driven out. Or what if the other regions of Italy, the ones that WEREN'T coming to the United States, had even MORE agriculture and those regions were even more prominent. Any help?

Thanks for reading these long winded questions.

dolver wrote:Hi. I am having trouble understanding the answers in the Kaplan 2008 book for a few questions. Here they are:

1) Attempts to blame the mayor's policies for the growing inequality of wages are misguided. The sharp growth in the gap in earnings between college and high school graduates in this city during the past decade resulted from overall technological trends that favored the skills of more educated workers. Nor can the mayor's response to the problem be criticized, for it would hardly be reasonable to expect him to attempt to slow the forces of technology.

Which of the following, if true, casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion drawn in the last sentence above?

Correct Answer: The mayor could have initiated policies that would have made it easier for less-educated workers to receive the education necessary for better paying jobs.

Why I Didn't Choose This Answer: So the PROBLEM is the discrepancy in wages between people without higher education and with it. Therefore, having MORE people receive higher education does NOT address this problem (as the discrepancy persists) and the last sentence of the argument is not refuted. What am I missing here?

Here we have a variation of a causation argument. Most causation arguments can be summarized as "X led to Y". This argument is a bit of a twist, because it really boils down to "X did NOT lead to Y".

To weaken the argument that the mayor did NOT contribute to the problem, we want to show either that the mayor DID contribute or that the mayor could have prevented the problem from arising.

The correct answers is behind door #2. The choice you cited indicates that the mayor could have done something to fix the problem, which means that it IS fair to criticize him for his policy.

Getting more people access to the necessary eduction wouldn't exacerbate the problem. The wage gap may still exist, but with necessary education fewer people would be on the wrong end of the gap.

Your reason for dismissing that answer is analagous to arguing that because there's a large discrepancy in health care between people with insurance and those without, we shouldn't give insurance to more people, because the discrepancy would still exist.

2) Due to the extreme poverty in Italy during the time period between 1870 and 1930, almost 4 1/2 million Italian--most of whom were farmers--immigrated to the United States. The wave from Italy reached its height in the 10-years span between 1920 and 1930, when Italians comprised 12% of the total number of immigrants admitted to the United States. The majority of these Italian immigrants were from Southern Italy and Sicily, and upon their arrival, they settled along the East Coast, with the heaviest concentrations in cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, though some made the arduous trip across the country to settle in Norther California.

The statements above, if true, support which of the following?

Correct Answer: At the turn of the 19th century, the southern portion of Italy was the country's prominent agricultural region.

Why I Didn't Choose This Answer: This book has hammered it into my head that I should not choose an answer like this if there could be other explanations. Even if it is a reasonable assumption. For instance, another answer is "The strong Euro dollar has contributed to the sharp decline in Italian immigrants" and the book says, yes, this is probably true, but there is no evidence to support this in the passage. Well, there is certainly a lack of evidence to support the correct answer as well, in my opinion. What's to say that the agricultural trade of the time in those areas was bad, so even though agriculture wasn't huge in those areas, all of the farmers were driven out. Or what if the other regions of Italy, the ones that WEREN'T coming to the United States, had even MORE agriculture and those regions were even more prominent. Any help?

Thanks for reading these long winded questions.

Could you please provide the exact citation for this question? I'd like to look into it further before posting a reply.