XAT 2020 Question Paper | Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

CAT Questions

The best questions to practice for XAT Exam are the actual XAT Question Papers. 2IIM offers you exactly that, in a student friendly format to take value from this. In XAT 2020 we saw some beautiful questions that laid emphasis on Learning ideas from basics and being able to comprehend more than remembering gazillion formulae and shortcuts. Original XAT Question paper is the best place to start off your XAT prep practice. This page provides exactly that. To check out about 1000 CAT Level questions with detailed video solutions for free, go here: CAT Question Bank

Read the passage below and answer the 3 associated questions:

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as it had to. (This is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat.) But, of course, this is the very sort of problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens. While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing, and maintaining things. Through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves—not unlike Soviet workers, actually—working forty- or even fifty-hour weeks on paper but effectively working fifteen hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organizing or attending motivational seminars, updating their Facebook profiles, or downloading TV box sets. The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger. (Think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the sixties.) And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.

Question 12 : Which of the following options, if true, BEST makes the author’s assertion on pointless jobs erroneous?

1. Pointless jobs add less value to the organization than the jobs of those who are making or fixing things.
2. Pointless jobs decrease the efficiency of the organization since they replace those who are making, fixing and moving things.
3. Workers who carry out pointless jobs are more loyal to the organization than others.
4. Even though the rate of increase in pointless jobs is higher, their absolute number on an average is lower than that of meaningful jobs.
5. Organizations with a higher number of pointless jobs are more profitable than those with less.

---

---

---

Explanatory Answer

The author is of the opinion that pointless jobs are not economical. This is very clear from the lines “According to the economic theory……..need to employ”. Only option E, if true, goes against what the author discusses and makes his writing erroneous.

---

The question is "Which of the following options, if true, BEST makes the author’s assertion on pointless jobs erroneous?"

Hence, the answer is Organizations with a higher number of pointless jobs are more profitable than those with less.

Choice E is the correct answer.

 

Verbal Ability for CAT | CAT Reading Comprehension

Verbal Ability for CAT| CAT Para Jumble

Verbal Ability for CAT | CAT Sentence Elimination

Verbal Ability for CAT | CAT Paragraph Completion

Verbal Ability for CAT | CAT Critical Reasoning

Verbal Ability for CAT | CAT Word Usage

Verbal Ability for CAT| CAT Para Summary

Verbal Ability for CAT | CAT Text Completion

Verbal Ability for CAT | CAT Sentence Correction