PT1.S4.Q6 - The most successful economies have been

miriaml7

I've done this question a couple different times, and each time I get wrecked.

Stimulus
To have the most successful economy you need to train as many people to:
1. research new tech
2. develop new tech
3. apply new tech

Japan seems to be thriving in regards to the standards set above.

Europe, on the other hand, is in a weaker position :

There aren't enough scientists to research and develop tech. It also lacks labor to use the tech.

Then we are told that Japan has a shortage of "technically qualified" people. They have a lot of people qualified to complete menial tasks.

A couple of things that I was still confused about:

1. Does it have to be scientists who research and develop new tech?
2. What is the definition of qualified people? Do you need a master's to be considered qualified, under this model for economic success?

Answer choices:

A. "worldwide shortage" - in the stimulus we are only told about what's going on in Japan and Europe so we can't make any inferences about what's going on worldwide

B. I went with this answer choice, because of the sentence that said that Japan didn't have "technically qualified" people. I did question whether or not you needed to have qualified people in order to meet the criteria that was outlined in the first sentence, but it seemed like a better answer choice than the others

C. "highly skilled labor" - all we know about Japan's labor is that it's based on people who aren't "technically qualified"

D. I confidently eliminated this because the stimulus said that Europe had a shortage of scientists who could research and develop new tech. I thought this implied that there was a shortage of new tech. If there's a shortage of new tech, why would you need more people to apply new tech? If you hired a ton of new people there wouldn't be any tech for them to work with, right?

E. "other countries" again, we don't know about other countries. The stimulus only tells us about what's happening with Japan and European countries.

Would greatly appreciate an explanation on why D is correct and C is not.

Thanks in advance!

canihazJD

D is the only one that's not comparative. Also...

B. I went with this answer choice, because of the sentence that said that Japan didn't have "technically qualified" people. I did question whether or not you needed to have qualified people in order to meet the criteria that was outlined in the first sentence, but it seemed like a better answer choice than the others

Forget about "technically qualified" nothing tells us whether or not it is the best country to compare to.

C. "highly skilled labor" - all we know about Japan's labor is that it's based on people who aren't "technically qualified"

Yes, we don't have "highly" in the stimulus. Also nothing indicated how common this labor is.

D. I confidently eliminated this because the stimulus said that Europe had a shortage of scientists who could research and develop new tech. I thought this implied that there was a shortage of new tech. If there's a shortage of new tech, why would you need more people to apply new tech? If you hired a ton of new people there wouldn't be any tech for them to work with, right?

That sentence is just saying Europe fails the necessary condition given in the first sentence. On this question it helps to kind of ball up the whole parts about technology into something like "X". If you're one of the most successful countries, then "X" (they can make and use tech).