- Sat Aug 18, 2012 1:58 pm
#4887
Hi Brittany,
Thanks for the question. Let's first look at what the "continuous change" hypothesis is as described in the passage. As you noted, you need to head back into that second paragraph to get the details. In that paragraph, it is mentioned that the federal law had a minimal impact, and that instead slowly evolving historical forces played the major role in economic progress (this is essentially an alternate cause argument: it's not the government's law that had the impact, it was slowly evolving historical forces such as trends in education).
Applying this idea to the scenarios in Question #27, you want an answer that relies on a beneficial change due to some non-governmental element.
Answer choices (A), (B), (C), and (E) are incorrect because each references some type of governmental element that plays a beneficial role (government funds a project, government gives special grants, governmental tax incentives, and lobbying that begets government assistance, respectively). The continuous change hypothesis posits that it wasn't government help that made the economic change happen, so these can all be knocked out.
That leaves answer choice (D), which relies on the changing state of the economy (a slow moving historical force) to allow private investors to play a role in creating a beneficial result. That matches the general outline of the continuous change hypothesis, so this answer choice is correct.
Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!
