Self-study
Editorial: Support Any democratic society is endangered by segmentation into classes of widely differing incomes between which there is little mobility. ████ █████ █████████ ██████████ ████████ █████████ ████████ ████ █████ ██ ███ ███ ██ ████ ███████████ █████ ████████ █████████ █████ ██████ ████ █████████████ ██ ███████ █████ ████████ █████████ ██████████ █████████ ██████ █████ ████████ ████ ██████ ████████ ████████ ██████████
Summarize Argument
The editorial concludes democracies should work to ensure constant economic expansion. Why? Because expansion gives people the opportunity to improve their economic standing, and economic classes that prevent people from improving their standing strengthen political divisions in democratic societies, making government worse.
Notable Assumptions
The editorial assumes a democracy is less likely to be segmented into classes if its people have better chances to improve their economic position. It also assumes that divisive political groups are less likely to stand in the way of good government if they’re weak, and that constant economic expansion wouldn’t create any new issues for good governance that outweigh its advantages.
25.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ █████ ████ ██████████ ███ █████████ ██ ███ ██████████
a
Discord within a ███████ █████ ██ ████████ ██████████ ██ ███ ████████████ ██ ███████
This doesn’t say eliminating discord reduces those inequities. In addition, the editorial doesn’t claim constant economic expansion will reduce the total amount of discord in a society—just that a failure to expand will cause divisive political factions to become stronger.
b
Political factions are █████████ ███████ ██ ████████ █████ ███████████ ██ ████ ████████ ████ ███ █████████ ██ ████████ ██████████
This exception to the rule doesn’t disprove the rule. It doesn’t change the editorial’s premise that divisive political factions make good governance harder to achieve.
c
Economic expansion results ██ █ ██████████████ ███████ ████████ ██ ████████ ███ ██████ ██ ███ ██████ ██████ ████ ███ ██████ ██ █████ ██████ ███████
This strengthens the editorial’s assumption that improved economic mobility will make class divisions less stark. It rules out a damaging possibility: that economic expansion mostly helps higher-income people, making class divisions greater.
d
Economic expansion cannot █████ ██████ █████ ██ ███████████ █████████ ██████████ ██ ███ ███████ ██ ██████ ██ ███ ███████ ██████ ███████
If anything, this weakens the argument. It suggests that economic growth may be self-defeating in the long run, since reducing class divisions may reduce the number of very wealthy people willing to invest.
e
The presence of ████████ █████████ ████████ ███ ██ ██ ████████ ██ ████████ ██████████
This doesn’t address the editorial’s primary assumption: that improved economic mobility decreases class divisions. It suggests that failure to expand the economy is self-reinforcing, not that it leads to bad governance.