#6 - Global Reference, Must Be True, Subject Perspective

[Etsevdos]

Narrowed to a & b. For a, I decided against because no indication is given of "similar". Is b incorrect because the the political economists believe human indicators are important to welfare, but believe they are addressed through economic GNP means (lines 19-23)?

[nicholaspavic]

Hi Etsevdos,

The reason why (B) is incorrect here is that you do not have any information about what the political economists mentioned in the first line think about human indicators. The most you can really infer from the passage is that they are not a part of their initial calculations regarding the health of a nation. And certainly, the fact that there is some short, dismissive consideration offered beginning on line 19 does not allow you to infer that they think it is "irrelevant." We don't know what they really think of it, but they do acknowledge its existence.

Moving on to why (A) is correct, lines 19-23 really do support the interpretation of "similar" that is stated in the answer choice. as far as political economists go. Of course, the author goes on to indicate why that is the wrong view, but as far as the political economists are concerned, they think if GNP goes up, so do the other indicators. That's why it's correct.

Thanks for the great question and I hope this helps.

[Etsevdos]

Thanks for your reply. Coming back to this. On second read, I agree A is certainly a better answer. Nonetheless, for clarity:
A. "SIMILAR" bothered me. I agree passage supports that as one goes up, the other does, but similar suggested something too precise for my liking. Still, I agree better than B so thanks for clarifying. Did similar bother you though?

B. 19-23 says that "Econom...as the "SOLE". I guess that is why I choose E initially- However, irrelevant as you note is likely not the proper term. If it said "The level....is not a proper indicator for measuring the welfare.... would that be correct?

[nicholaspavic]

Hi etsevdos,

"Similar" was ok for me, it's sufficiently vague. If (A) did not exist, then changing the wording of (B) might make it a very bad correct answer choice. I really wouldn't like it because we are not very sure what these guys would really think of it, but at least it COULD be right.

Thanks for the great follow up!

[ltowns1]

Hi I'm a little lost with answer (D). Can someone help me out with this one? I can understand why (A) is correct, (although I think I could argue that A feels a little too general in that it only points out that a change in the IMPROVEMENT of GNP can lead to a change in human indicators, what about a negative change in the GNP?; does that lead to a negative change in the human indjcators!), but I feel like that's the only provable answer other than that the one I considered which leads me to my main issue with the problem. If we know that GNP is believed to be the sole measure of a nation's economic health, why then can we not conclude that the welfare of residents is irrelevant to it as (D) does? Is it because talking about what measures economic health and what is relevant to economic health are two different things? Thanks in advance!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Ltowns, we don't have enough here to support that the idea that the economists think that the human indicators are irrelevant. They specifically address the issue and believe that the GNP will capture the human factors because the human factors are correlated to the GNP. It's not saying that the human factors are irrelevant. It's that the human factors are represented already by the GNP. As long as the economists think that a nation's GNP increase will correlate to an increase in the human welfare, they aren't saying they believe human welfare is irrelvant.

Hope that helps!

[ltowns1]

Yep, I see it now. Thanks so much!

[Nitani10]

Hi etsevdos,
"Similar" definitely bothered me when I completed this question. But I eliminated "B" for the same reason nicholaspavic pointed out. Remember, the question is asking what the political economists would be most likely to agree with. There's nothing to indicating they think the change in human indicators would be similar. We just know that the author doesn't believe that the change would be similar (or as they put it: "commensurate"). However, they'd be more/most likely to agree with answer choice A over any of the other answer choices.

LSAC is really good at making the wrong answer choices appear correct and the right answer choice look wrong. An important part of LSAT strategy is to choose an answer that you don't love rather than any other answer choice that is wrong/unsupported.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Careful Nitani---we don't really care what the author would think about any of these answer choices. The question isn't about the author's perspective, but instead about the economists the author disagrees with. We can support answer choice (A) with the beginning of the second paragraph, where the author directly states that the economists mentioned support their use of GNP by stating that the human indicators follow the GNP.

Great work!