Self-study
Governments have only one response to public criticism of socially necessary services: regulation of the activity of providing those services. ███ ███████████ ██████████ ████ ███ ████████ ████ █████████ ██ ██████████ ███ ███ ████ ██ ████████████ ███████████ ██ █████ █████ ██ ████████ █████████ ██████████ ████████ █████ ██████ █████████ ██ ██████████ ████████ ███ ██████████ ███ ██████████ ██ ████ █████████ ███ █████ ████ ████████ ███ ████████ ██████████ ███ ██████████ ██ ███████ ██ ████████
Stimulus Summary
The stimulus starts with some general claims. First, we're told that governments' only response to public criticism of socially necessary services is to regulate the provision of these services. Second, we're told that regulation "inevitably" makes the activity more expensive, which is a problem "in these times of strained financial resources." The stimulus then tells us about a specific situation: the government is certain to respond to public criticism of childcare services, which are socially necessary.
Analysis: Rule-Application
Notice that the stimulus provides us with some general "rules" that apply to the particular situation we're told about in the last sentence. Since the government will respond to public criticism of childcare services, and those services are socially necessary, then we know (by the "rule" in the first sentence) that the government will regulate the activity of providing those services. This sets in motion the second rule, that regulating the activity makes the activity more expensive, which is "troublesome in these times of strained financial resources." So we can infer that childcare services will be regulated, that they will become more expensive, and that this will be troublesome.
9.
Which one of the following ██████████ ███ ██ ████████ ████ ███ ████████
a
The quality of █████ ████ ████ ████████
The stimulus only lets us infer that childcare services will become more expensive. We have no idea if this will come with an increase or decrease in quality. (A) is not a valid inference.
b
The cost of █████████ ██████████ ████████ ████ █████████
Correct. The stimulus tells us that the "only" response the government has in situations like this one is to regulate the services being criticized, and that regulation "inevitably" makes those services more expensive. So we can validly infer that the cost of providing childcare services will increase.
c
The government will ███ ███████ ██ ██████ ████████ ██ █████ █████
The stimulus doesn't give us any reason to predict that the government will or will not fund "advances" in childcare. From the stimulus, we just know that childcare will be regulated and will therefore become more expensive. We can't infer anything more specific about how funding will be used for childcare.
d
If public criticism ██ ██████ ██ ████████ ███████ ███ ██████████ ██ ███████ ██ ████████
The stimulus never gives us any general conditions for when the government will certainly respond to public criticism. We only know that in this specific case, the government is certain to respond to public criticism — but we don't even know that this public criticism of childcare services has been "strongly voiced," only that it has effectively undermined confidence in those services. So the stimulus doesn't give us any grounds to infer the general rule contained in (D).
e
If child-care services ███ ███ ██████████ ███ ████ ██ █████████ █████ ████ ████ ███ █████████
The stimulus gives us grounds to infer that if childcare services are regulated, then the price of those services will increase. The contrapositive of this would say that if the cost of those services doesn't increase, then they weren't regulated:
/cost increase → /regulated
This isn't the same thing as this answer choice, which says:
/reguated → /cost increase
So (E) confuses necessary and sufficient conditions, and isn't a valid inference.