Question

Read the following passage carefully.

Policymakers have increasingly turned to "nudge" interventions—subtle changes in the way options are presented—to encourage citizens to make better decisions regarding health, finance, and the environment, without formally restricting freedom of choice. For instance, automatically enrolling employees in retirement savings plans significantly increases participation rates compared to systems requiring active enrollment. Proponents of this approach argue that because nudges do not remove any options or impose significant material incentives, they perfectly preserve individual autonomy while efficiently steering people toward objectively beneficial outcomes. They contend that citizens are largely unaffected by these subtle psychological cues if they have strong contrary preferences, meaning that nudges primarily influence those who are indifferent or undecided.

However, critics caution that the efficacy and ethical justification of nudges depend heavily on the context of the intervention. They argue that when policymakers design choice architectures to favor specific outcomes, they are inherently substituting their own judgment for that of the individual. Furthermore, evaluating the success of nudges often relies on a narrow definition of well-being. For example, if a government decides that saving more for retirement is the optimal choice and implements default enrollment to achieve this, it claims a policy victory when overall savings rates rise.

The author argues that in celebrating these increases in retirement participation as an unmitigated success, proponents of default enrollment overlook the complex financial realities of lower-income workers. Specifically, the author contends that for individuals living paycheck to paycheck, immediate liquidity is often necessary to avoid high-interest debt or to meet basic living expenses. When nudged into allocating a portion of their already strained income into relatively inaccessible retirement accounts, these workers might be forced to borrow money at exorbitant rates to cover emergencies. Thus, the author concludes that default enrollment in retirement plans is not universally beneficial to all employees.

The author's conclusion that default enrollment in retirement plans is not universally beneficial relies on which one of the following assumptions?