XAT 2020 Question Paper | Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

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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 13 : Which of the following can be BEST inferred from the passage?

1. Keeping people employed for longer hours serves the plans of the ruling class.
2. The ruling class abhors leisure so much that they encourage organizations to create unwanted jobs.
3. Pointless jobs are here to stay, regardless of whether they are necessary or not.
4. Work as a moral right is the design of the ruling class to cut down on leisure.
5. For political reasons, profit-making firms sometimes indulge in non-profitable decisions.

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Explanatory Answer

A. Keeping people employed for longer hours serves the plans of the ruling class. - This can be inferred from the line “The ruling class has…..danger”. This option is correct.
B. The ruling class abhors leisure so much that they encourage organizations to create unwanted jobs. – This option cannot be inferred from the passage. The passage does not say that ruling class abhors leisure but that they do not prefer the working class to have leisure.
C. Pointless jobs are here to stay, regardless of whether they are necessary or not. – This option is incorrect. Pointless jobs are necessary for the ruling class to keep the working class busy.
D. Work as a moral right is the design of the ruling class to cut down on leisure. – This option is incorrect. The reason is the same as for option B.
E. For political reasons, profit-making firms sometimes indulge in non-profitable decisions. – This option is incorrect. The passage does not talk about non-profitable decisions at all. The passage only talks about profit seeking firms.

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The question is "Which of the following can be BEST inferred from the passage?"

Hence, the answer is Keeping people employed for longer hours serves the plans of the ruling class.

Choice A is the correct answer.