Can someone grade my essays from the Princeton Review test?

Hi, just did these 2 essays.

“Some have argued that the salaries of corporate executives should be linked to those of their lowest-paid employees. This, they argue, will improve relations between management and workers, reducing costly labor disputes and increasing worker productivity. What these people overlook, however, is that these high salaries are necessary to attract the best managers, the individuals whose decisions have the greatest impact on the overall well-being of the company.”

Which do you find more compelling, the contention that worker and executive salaries should be linked, or the response to it? Support your position with reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
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I believe that high salaries are necessary to attract the best managers who have the greatest impact on the overall well-being of the company.

One of the benefits of living in a free country is that we have the ability to get rewarded for our efforts. The better we produce a good or provide a service, the greater price we can ask for it. The services corporate executives provide follow the same principal. The author of my undergraduate textbook on Organizational Behaviour wrote that if, a company did not have an executive in charge of marketing, they would have to pay an outside company. The better the services of the external company, the more they would charge. Therefore, if external parties can charge higher for better performance, then internal managers should be awarded accordingly. Paying these managers lower salaries will give them an incentive to leave the company and work for external companies that might provide such services.

Linking corporate pay to lower-paid workers will have negative impacts as well. If for example, a company has a 10% pay raise throughout their company. The increase in the dollar amount of a corporate executive will be much higher than the lower paid employees. If costly labor disputes are caused due to difference in salary, then this will still hold true in this scenario. Giving executives a lower pay raise might deter them from staying with the company.

It is important to note that the concept of "the greater the risk, the greater the return" applies to this situation as well. Corporate executives have to handle a lot more responsibility than lower-paid employees. This holds true for all levels of management. While working in retail I observed that if a sales associate performed poorly, he would not be held accountable for the entire departments slumping sales. However, the department manager on the other hand would have to report to his seniors and explain why his entire team was performing poorly. This added responsibility, which is a result of being accountable for factors not under your direct control, i.e. the sales techniques used by other sales associates, is the reason they are paid higher. Their responsibility is not to just improve their personal productivity, but rather the entire departments. As such, corporate executives are responsible for a number of employees. Linking their salaries might have a positive effect on the productivity on the lowest paid employees, but it is more likely to have a negative impact on the productivity of the executives. As such, quality talent needs to be attracted that can have an influence on their team members. To attract such quality talent, higher salaries will have to be used as an incentive.

Therefore, even though there can be a large gap between executive salaries and lower paid employees, in order to have an improvement in the company's operations, it is necessary to have high salaries as an incentive to attract and retain top talent.

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“Without new ideas, any society will stagnate. New ideas can only be introduced in a society that permits freedom of expression. Therefore, if a society is to thrive, all limits on freedom of expression should be eliminated.”

Discuss how well-reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion, be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

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I find this argument to be poorly constructed. Their is a lack of evidence, questionable assumptions are made and several counter-examples and arguments can be presented.

The author provides no evidence of a society stagnating because of a lack of ideas. A society can have many new ideas and still stagnate if they are not implemented thoroughly, therefore the presence of new ideas does not lead to a society avoiding stagnation. If the author could provide examples of societies that have stagnated due to a lack of new ideas, it would strengthen the argument.

Freedom of expression is not a necessity for the introduction of new ideas. This would suggest that the only source of ideas is from within the society. In today's world, with the presence of globalization, ideas are often borrowed from other societies and implemented. In theory, a government with absolute control over their population that allows no freedom of expression could enforce a new idea. If the author was to suggest that new ideas can only be developed in societies that permit freedom of speech, it would help strengthen their argument.

The conclusion reached here states that without the introduction of new ideas, a society will stagnate and therefore not thrive. Several counter-arguments can be presented. It could be said, that a society that develops new ideas takes greater risks by letting go of older established practices, and therefore there is a chance of great loss if their new idea does not work as originally planned. This would weaken the conclusion greatly.

An assumption made in this argument is that freedom of expression leads only to good ideas that help society. However, the negative impact is not considered. If evidence is collected that greater freedom of expression leads to newer ideas in terms of crimes, then the argument could be refuted greatly.

The author can strengthen the argument by providing some evidence. Evidence of societies that have stagnated without the development of new ideas internally will help. Additionally, if it can be proven that the number of good ideas is far greater than the number and impact of bad ideas developed, it will allow to better evaluate the conclusion.

THANKS!

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