A law requiring companies to offer employees unpaid time off to care for their…
2024
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.
Many businesses in this country already offer employees some form of parental leave.
- B.
A parental-leave law will serve to strengthen the family as a social institution in this country.
- C.
In most polls, a majority of citizens say they favor passage of a parental-leave law.
- D.
Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations.
Attempted by 2 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept: In a “weaken the argument” critical-reasoning question, the credited choice supplies new information that damages the specific causal or predictive link between the stated evidence and the conclusion — most often a real counter-example showing the predicted outcome does not reliably follow. A statement about popularity, general social value, or an unrelated fact leaves that link untouched and cannot weaken the conclusion.
Application: The conclusion here is that a legally mandated, unpaid parental-leave policy will harm the economic competitiveness of the nation’s businesses. The argument rests on an unstated assumption — that operating under such a mandate makes firms less competitive. The claim that some of the world’s most economically competitive businesses are based in countries with strong parental-leave regulations is a direct counter-example to that assumption: it shows real cases where the mandate and the highest levels of competitiveness coexist, which is exactly the fact needed to seriously weaken the argument’s conclusion.
Cross-check — why the other statements do not weaken the conclusion:
A statement about businesses already offering some voluntary parental leave describes today’s optional practice; it says nothing about the effect of turning that benefit into a compulsory, nationwide mandate, so it leaves the competitiveness claim unaddressed.
A statement about strengthening the family as a social institution speaks to a social outcome, a different subject from the argument’s specific economic-competitiveness claim, so it cannot weaken that claim.
A statement about public opinion favouring the law reports popularity, not economic consequence; how many people support a policy is independent of what the policy actually does to competitiveness.
Only the statement citing highly competitive economies that already enforce strong parental-leave regulations attacks the causal assumption the argument depends on, so it is the strongest weakener among the four.