S-V Agreement

[kedieez967]

the following sentence is from Manhattan Sentence Correction.

Having good friends IS a wonderful thing.

because having good friends is a subject rephrase, the verb is singular.

But there is another problem from OG, because i can not create the problem(OG13-14) here, i will write a similar sentence.

Rising prices of various goods make people's live even hard.

GMAC thinks that because the prices is plural, "make" should be plural.

hi, Stacey, could you help me figure out this paradox? it has been haunting me for days. Many Thanks.

[tim]

Please provide page numbers.