Question 1927 (Professional athletes are overpaid…)

[faronowitz]

Question:
"Professional athletes are overpaid. Their popularity is the main driver of advertising revenue, but they really do not deserve the salaries they make. The salary structure needs to be overhauled."

Why does the answer, "Professional athletes are paid too much money" support the conclusion but "Professional athletes do not deserve to be paid high salaries" does not?

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

This will seem like a very picky issue, but it's one LSAT loves to test:

relative language
vs.
absolute language

example:
Shaquille O'Neal is shorter than Yao Ming.

Does that mean that Shaquille O'Neal is short?

===
Let's say that "John does not deserve a high salary."

Can you tell me whether or not John is overpaid?

No, because you don't know whether he's currently paid a high salary, an average salary, a low salary, etc.


Now let's say that "John is paid too much money."

Can you tell me whether or not John is overpaid?

Yes, because those two statements essentially mean the same thing.

Do you see the difference? (naturally, the challenge with the topic of professional athletes is ignoring our "real-world" ideas that they ARE paid high salaries ... the info we received in the paragraph never told us that, so for the sake of this question, we don't know it)