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I'd love your help analyzing this necessary assumption question. My trouble is in identifying the conclusion. Stimulus immediately below, followed with my question...

Museum visitor: The national government has mandated a 5 percent increase in the minimum wage paid to all workers. This mandate will adversely affect the museum-going public. The museum's revenue does not currently exceed its expenses, and since the mandate will significantly increase the museum's operating expenses, the museum will be forced either to raise admission fees or to decrease services.

I thought "This mandate will adversely affect the museum-going public" was the main conclusion, with "the museum will be forced either to..." as the intermediary conclusion, and the "museum's revenues does not" as the premise supporting the intermediate conclusion. Is this not true?

Thanks to everyone's help!

Yes, that's right. What makes you doubt it?

I'd actually disagree, just a tad.

There are a lot of arguments on the LSAT that are simply PREMISE --> CONCLUSION, and that's it - just two pieces. But there are tons of arguments that have more steps to them than that. We talk about these arguments as having an intermediary conclusion, but there's nothing to stop an argument from having two, three, or even more intermediary steps between the premise and the conclusion. Often times a premise could be broken down into multiple argument leaps, but it may just simpler to think of it as a unitary premise.

So, if I were being really strict about the various pieces, I'd break it down like this instead:

• PREMISES: 1) Museum's revenue is not greater than expense
  2) mandate = 5% increase in min. wage
  FIRST INTERMEDIARY CONCLUSION: mandate = significantly increase museum oper. exp.
  SECOND INTERMEDIARY CONCLUSION: museum must raise fees or decr. services
  FINAL CONCLUSION: mandate = adverse effect on public

Normally, I might not care about all of those pieces - I might smoosh parts of it together a bit to make it easier to think about a major disconnect somewhere. This question happens to demand that we consider the disconnect between the original premise that the mandate increases minimum wage and the first intermediary conclusion, that the mandate will significantly increase the operating expenses. If I had smooshed these two pieces together and just labeled it 'premise', then the correct answer here would look like it was just supporting a premise - and that would look like a trap.

What do you think?