Parental leave policy

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Parental leave policy

by Pdgmat2010 » Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:15 pm
A law requiring companies to offer employees unpaid time off to care for their children will harm the economic competitiveness of our nation's businesses. Companies must be free to set their own employment policies without mandated parental-leave regulations.

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the conclusion of the argument above?

(A) A parental-leave law will serve to strengthen the family as a social institution in this country.
(B) Many businesses in this country already offer employees some form of parental leave.
(C) Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations.
(D) Only companies with one hundred or more employees would be subject to the proposed parental-leave law.
(E) In most polls, a majority of citizens say they favor passage of a parental-leave law.

Conclusion: Companies should be free to decide whether they want to provide for unpaid leave to parents to care for their children , as making this leave mandatory will harm the economic competitiveness of the nation's businesses
My analysis :
A. whether this policy will strengthen family as a social institution is out of scope and does not weaken the conc.
B. As many businesses already have this policy, it shows that getting rid of this policy should not have an adverse effect to make the nation's businesses non-competitive. (pls tell me why this is wrong)
C. 'Some of the countries' have no bearing on this country's policies.
D. no relevance to the conclusion
E. Even if majority of citizens favor this law, it has no bearing on whether this policy will harm the nation's economic competitiveness.


OA is C
Source: — Critical Reasoning |

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by jube » Wed Jun 23, 2010 11:27 pm
Conclusion: Nation's competitiveness will be harmed in the face of a law that requires companies to give employees unpaid time off for child care.

To weaken this if we have something which shows that this isn't the case, we'd have found our answer. C does this directly & should be the OA in my thinking.

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by sumanr84 » Thu Jun 24, 2010 1:09 am
jube wrote:Conclusion: Nation's competitiveness will be harmed in the face of a law that requires companies to give employees unpaid time off for child care.

To weaken this if we have something which shows that this isn't the case, we'd have found our answer. C does this directly & should be the OA in my thinking.
Completely agree with your thought..well done
I am on a break !!

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by gtvisa2002 » Tue Jun 29, 2010 8:25 am
Pdgmat2010 wrote: C. 'Some of the countries' have no bearing on this country's policies.
I agree with you that "some other countries" has no bearing.

But if we look at this in a diff angle, this is a weaken type.
There are two ways to weaken an argument.
1. Find an alternate cause - In this case we have only one premise and may not be able to find alternate cause.
2. Refute the premise. As we have only one premise, this is an easy task, what if offering this paid off is not actually affecting economy....

So C is the only choice...
It would have been better if it read, 'some of the countries which are similar to our country' However no other choice is reasonable... so C seems to fit the bill.

HTH