Q20 - Most people in the United States

[alex.cheng.2012]

I'm having trouble understanding why answer (D) is incorrect. I think I know why answer (E) is correct, but further clarification/insight would be greatly appreciated as well.

Is answer (D) wrong because of a slight term shift? The argument talks about providing fairly priced goods and services. The answer talks about value for their money. Is it safe to say that value for money is not the same as fairly priced goods and services?

Is answer (E) correct because consumers think that big businesses (and small businesses) provide fairly priced goods and services, but only regard big businesses as socially responsible in times of prosperity. If the only criteria for big businesses being socially responsible is providing fairly priced goods/services, then the consumers would view it as socially responsible at all times, prosperity or not. But since they only view them as socially responsible in times of prosperity, there must be some other additional criteria for big businesses to be viewed as socially responsible, other than providing fairly priced goods/services.

[hana.kid]

I chose (D) and would appreciate some feedback as well.

I think (D) is wrong because we have no way of knowing whether people would still regard big business as socially responsible even if people didn't regard it as providing customers with value for their money. I'm not sure, but I think "value for their money" is an acceptable term shift for "fairly priced goods."

I think you're spot on for (E)!

[maryadkins]

I think (D) is wrong because we have no way of knowing whether people would still regard big business as socially responsible even if people didn't regard it as providing customers with value for their money.

Exactly! We're told that most people in the US view businesses large and small as providing consumers with fairly priced goods and services. But when it comes to "good for society" and being "socially responsible," small businesses get a good rep all the time; big businesses only do when there's prosperity. Why? We don't know. We don't know why people view big businesses differently during times of prosperity; we just know they do.

(E) is correct for the reasons you gave below. We know that people think big business gives fair prices but isn't socially responsible unless society is prosperous. This means there must be some criteria other than fair prices required in order to be considered social responsibility.

(A) is out of scope. We're told what most people in the US think; it doesn't matter how often they think about it.

(B) Efficient? We aren't given a basis for inferring this.

(C) Again, we don't know why big business is viewed more favorably in times of prosperity; we just know it is.

Hope this helps clarify.

[csunnerberg13]

Strange question about this problem...

when I tried to predict what the answer choice was, I thought that it might be something about the small businesses doing something extra that the big businesses were not. That didn't come up in the answer choices and I was still able to answer the question correctly. But I was wondering, if an answer choice had said something like, "Small businesses consistently engage in charitable events that are considered socially responsible while big businesses do not", would that have been a possible answer? I wondered because this seems like too big of a leap for something that is more of an infer question.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

[michellemyxu]

I'm having trouble with the most/many issue here. The stimulus starts with "most people in the US" but then in line 4 it reads "most people". I thought it's a scope shift... Because most people in the US does not mean most people in general, or in the world, right? You can have everyone in the world other than people from the US to believe the statement after "However". So I think we can't infer anything about "many people in the US" as mentioned in (E).

Any help? Thanks very much!

[ohthatpatrick]

Two things:

1. This is PT 1. They've tightened the screws over the years.

2. This is "which answer has the most support", not "which answer is proven by the above facts". So you can simultaneously consider (E) a leap while also considering it the most supportable leap.

Hope this helps.