Read the passage and choose the option that best answer the question.

1. 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?

2. Below is an excerpt from a letter that was sent by the chairman of a corporation to the stockholders. A number of charges have been raised against me, some serious, some trivial. Individuals seeking to control the corporation for their own purposes have demanded my resignation. Remember that no court of law in any state has found me guilty of any criminal offense whatsoever. In the American tradition, as you know, an individual is considered innocent until proven guilty. Furthermore, as the corporation's unbroken six-year record of growth will show, my conduct of my official duties as chairman has only helped enhance the success of the corporation, and so benefited every stockholder. Which of the following can be properly inferred from the excerpt?

3. The postal service is badly mismanaged. Forty years ago, first-class letter delivery cost only three cents. Since then, the price has increased nearly tenfold, with an actual decrease in the speed and reliability of service. Each of the following statements, if true, would tend to weaken the argument above EXCEPT:

4. Which of the following best completes the passage below? As long as savings deposits are insured by the government, depositors will have no incentive to evaluate the financial strength of a savings bank. Yield alone will influence their choice of bank. To attract deposits, banks will be forced to offer the highest possible interest rates. And since paying higher rates inevitably strains the financial strength of a bank, ______

5. Civic Leader: The high cancer rate among our citizens is the result of hazardous material produced at your plant. Board of Directors: Our statistics show that rates of cancer are high throughout the valley in which the plant is situated because local wells that supply drinking water are polluted, not because of the plant. Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the board's claims?

6. During the Second World War, about 375,000 civilians died in the United States and about 408,000 members of the United States armed forces died overseas. On the basis of those figures, it can be concluded that it was not much more dangerous to be overseas in the armed forces during the Second World War than it was to stay at home as a civilian. Which of the following would reveal most clearly the absurdity of the conclusion drawn above?

7. Affirmative action is good business. So asserted the National Association of Manufacturers while urging retention of an executive order requiring some federal contractors to set numerical goals for hiring minorities and women. ?Diversity in work force participation has produced new ideas in management, product development, and marketing,? the association claimed. The association's argument as it is presented in the passage above would be most strengthened if which of the following were true?

8. Because no employee wants to be associated with bad news in the eyes of a superior, information about serious problems at lower levels is progressively softened and distorted as it goes up each step in the management hierarchy. The chief executive is, therefore, less well informed about problems at lower levels than are his or her subordinates at those levels. The conclusion drawn above is based on the assumption that

9. Mouth cancer is a danger for people who rarely brush their teeth. In order to achieve early detection of mouth cancer in these individuals, a town's public health officials sent a pamphlet to all town residents, describing how to perform weekly self-examinations of the mouth for lumps. Which of the following, if true, is the best criticism of the pamphlet as a method of achieving the public health officials' goal?

10. Airplane manufacturer: I object to your characterization of our X-387 jets as dangerous. No X-387 in commercial use has ever crashed or even had a serious malfunction. Airline regulator: The problem with the X-387 is not that it, itself, malfunctions, but that it creates a turbulence in its wake that can create hazardous conditions for aircraft in its vicinity. The airline regulator responds to the manufacturer by doing which of the following?