Q19 - Valitania’s long-standing practice

[yusangmin]

ok so this is about the whole valetenia thing.

so i chose answer choice C for this question, "no more people compete for elected office when office holders are paid well than when they are paid poorly."

but then luckily i saw answer choice E, but its not that lucky because i was pretty dang sure C was correct before i checked the other one.

ok so my reasoning was that if say 10 people want to run for office WITHOUT the incentive of money, THEN, if what the author were sayin was true, if suddenly being in office allows you to make much money, THEORETICALLY, according to the author, this should attract crooks who just want money, yet according to the answer choice it says its the same amount of people.

ok so i checked it later and wonder if its because of the whole people who are running for elected office thing? because this wouldnt necessarily equal the people who are in office right now, however the answer choice C is very general and never really specifies a time, so it could refer to the people in the stimulus.

then i thought maybe, ok so maybe when theres no money, genuine people ran, but then when there was money involved, all the genuine people didnt run and crooked people did. and then it got me thinking if this is true maybe this whole A/C is too vague?

I DONT KNOW. help would be greatly appreciated!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

So, it sounds like you're down to answer choices (C) and (E). Let's think about this, does answer choice (C) tell us anything about what kind of people are running for elected office? Not really! It tells us that as many run when offices are poorly paid as when they're highly paid, but does not tell us what kind of people are running. Another problem with answer choice (C) is that it doesn't apply to Valitania. The argument already told us that Valitania has a long-standing practice of paying high salaries.

Let's look at answer choice (E). This one does tell us something about the elected officials. It tells us that most people with elected office in Valitania could be earning more money doing something else. So, these people are clearly not motivated by money. This undermines the arguments conclusion that Valitania's politicians are mostly interested in making money rather than serving the needs of the nation.

(A) doesn't address whether these people expect to benefit overall, even though they've chipped in on their own campaigns.
(B) is irrelevant. How long the terms are doesn't tell us how long these people can serve. A term might be 4 years, but someone could serve for 4 terms! And they still could be good and decent people.
(C) doesn't apply to the argument. When weakening an argument, make sure to weaken the conclusion, and don't choose an answer that doesn't apply by not conforming to the evidence.
(D) is a principle about politicians who are corrupt. But it doesn't give us information that allows us to determine whether Valitania is full of corrupt politicians.
(E) is the correct answer. This tells us that the politicians in Valitania are probably not just money minded, because they could be earning more money elsewhere!

[Shiggins]

I was also very stuck on choice C and was able to reread it and eliminate it.

If choice C had said that those competing for political jobs are " no more likely" to compete for high paid jobs as low paid. Would something of that nature hurt the argument. My reasoning would be that it hurts the attraction of the job.

This is what I had thought it said when I had read it too quickly, then I realized it was talking about there are no more people who would compete for high paid compared to low paid, which does not effect argument bc there are still people ruining the integrity by being attracted by the money.

If anyone could add or correct much appreciated.

[iridium77]

I think the reason why c.) is not correct is that it does not say anything about the nature of the people who do run for office, just about the numbers attracted when more is paid.

[ldfdsa]

I think (C) is wrong because the argument is about "wrong" people, not "more" people.

[Sweetangel]

C does not hurt the argument because it's a matter of quality vs. quantity. Who cares if more people don't run when they're well paid than poorly paid? Fact of the matter is the ones who DO run are doing so with the wrong motives; no claims are made about the general population's propensity to run when wages are more enticing. So, C is compatible with the conclusion.