Many political economists believe that the soundest indicator of the economic health of a nation is the nation's gross-national product (GNP) per capita ?a figure reached by dividing the total value of the goods produced yearly in a nation by its population and taken to be a measure of the welfare of the nation's residents. But there are many factors affecting residents' welfare that are not captured by per capita GNP; human indicators, while sometimes more difficult to calculate or document, provide sounder measures of a nation's progress than does the indicator championed by these economists. These human indicators include nutrition and life expectancy; birth weight and level of infant mortality; ratio of population level to availability of resources; employment opportunities; and the ability of governments to provide services such as education, clean water, medicine, public transportation, and mass communication for their residents.
The economists defend their use of per capita GNP as the sole measure of a nation's economic health by claiming that improvements in per capita GNP eventually stimulate improvements in human indicators. But, in actuality, this often fails to occur. Even in nations where economic stimulation has brought about substantial improvements in per capita GNP, economic health as measured by human indicators does not always reach a level commensurate with the per capita GNP. Nations that have achieved a relatively high per capita GNP, for example, sometimes experience levels of infant survival, literacy, nutrition, and life expectancy no greater than levels in nations where per capita GNP is relatively low. In addition, because per capita GNP is an averaged figure, it often presents a distorted picture of the wealth of a nation; for example, in a relatively sparsely populated nation where a small percentage of residents receives most of the economic benefits of production while the majority receives very little benefit, per capita GNP may nevertheless be high. The welfare of a nation's residents is a matter not merely of total economic benefit, but also of the distribution of economic benefits across the entire society. Measuring a nation's economic health only by total wealth frequently obscures a lack of distribution of wealth across the society as a whole.
In light of the potential for such imbalances in distribution of economic benefits, some nations have begun to realize that their domestic economic efforts are better directed away from attempting to raise per capita GNP and instead toward ensuring that the conditions measured by human indicators are salutary. They recognize that unless a shift in focus away from using material wealth as the sole indicator of economic success is effected, the well-being of the nation may be endangered, and that nations that do well according to human indicators may thrive even if their per capita GNP remains stable or lags behind that of other nations
The term "welfare" is used in the first paragraph to refer most specifically to which one of the following?
A. the overall quality of life for individuals in a nationDonna Haraway's Primate Visions is the most ambitious book on the history of science yet written from a feminist perspective, embracing not only the scientific construction of gender but also the interplay of race, class, and colonial and postcolonial culture with the "Western" construction of the very concept of nature itself. Primatology is a particularly apt vehicle for such themes because primates seem so much like ourselves that they provide ready material for scientists' conscious and unconscious projections of their beliefs about nature and culture.
Haraway's most radical departure is to challenge the traditional disjunction between the active knower (scientist/historian) and the passive object (nature/history). In Haraway's view, the desire to understand nature, whether in order to tame it or to preserve it as a place of wild innocence, is based on a troublingly masculinist and colonialist view of nature as an entity distinct from us and subject to our control. She argues that it is a view that is no longer politically, ecologically, or even scientifically viable. She proposes an approach that not only recognizes diverse human actors (scientists, government officials, laborers, science fiction writers) as contributing to our knowledge of nature, but that also recognizes the creatures usually subsumed under nature (such as primates) as active participants in creating that knowledge as well. Finally, she insists that the perspectives afforded by these different agents cannot be reduced to a single, coherent reality ?there are necessarily only multiple, interlinked, partial realities.
This iconoclastic view is reflected in Haraway's unorthodox writing style. Haraway does not weave the many different elements of her work into one unified, overarching Story of Primatology; they remain distinct voices that will not succumb to a master narrative. This fragmented approach to historiography is familiar enough in historiographical theorizing but has rarely been put into practice by historians of science. It presents a complex alternative to traditional history, whether strictly narrative or narrative with emphasis on a causal argument. Haraway is equally innovative in the way she incorporates broad cultural issues into her analysis. Despite decades of rhetoric from historians of science about the need to unite issues deemed "internal" to science (scientific theory and practice) and those considered "external" to it (social issues, structures, and beliefs), that dichotomy has proven difficult to set aside. Haraway simply ignores it. The many readers in whom this separation is deeply ingrained may find her discussions of such popular sources as science fiction, movies, and television distracting, and her statements concerning such issues as nuclear war bewildering and digressive. To accept her approach one must shed a great many assumptions about what properly belongs to the study of science.
The author uses the term "rhetoric" in last paragraph most probably in order to do which one of the following?
A. underscore the importance of clear and effective writing in historiographical worksThe regulation that is proposed for dental insurance will contribute only small assistance to patients in the reduction of costs for regular dental car. Although, the bill does limit the amount the dentist can charge for a regular visit, it does not limit the expense amount that they can charge if a patient is in need of a special procedure, and it doesn't place any limits on the amount of times that the dentist may see a patient for the same occurring problem. This being the case, instead of the patient being charged once, the dentist can bill the patient numerous times, and the total costs will not reduce.
The above argument is opposed to the new legislation based on:
A. Identifying a loophole in the regulation proposal that allows dentists to charge patients the same amount of money on a continuing basis.Which one of the following most accurately describes the organization of the final paragraph in the passage?
A. A criticism is identified and its plausibility is investigated.Maria won this year's local sailboat race by beating Sue, the winner in each of the four previous years. We can conclude from this that Maria trained hard.
The conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed?
A. Sue did not train as hard as Maria trained.Estelle states: When I went fishing the other day, every fish that I caught was a salmon, and every salmon I saw I caught.
Of the following statements listed below, which one can be concluded from the observations of Estelle?
A. Salmon was the only fish that Estelle saw while she was fishing.Social critic: The whole debate over the legal right of rock singers to utter violent lyrics misses the point. Legally, there is very little that may not be said. But not everything that may legally be said, ought to be said. Granted, violence predates the rise in popularity of such music. Yet words also have the power to change the way we see and the way we act.
Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the passage?
A. If rock music that contains violent lyrics is morally wrong, then it should be illegal.Bird-watchers explore a forest to see which of the following six kinds of birds -- grosbeak, harrier, jay, martin, shrike, wren -- it contains. The findings are consistent with the following conditions:
If harriers are in the forest, then grosbeaks are not. If jays, martins, or both are in the forest, then so are harriers If wrens are in the forest, then so are grosbeaks If jays are not in the forest, then shrikes are
Which one of the following is the maximum number of the six kinds of birds the forest could contain?
A. twoThe autobiographical narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861), by Harriet A. Jacobs, a stave of African descent, not only recounts an individual life but also provides, implicitly and explicitly, a perspective on the larger United States culture from the viewpoint of one denied access to it. Jacobs, as a woman and a slave, faced the stigmas to which those statuses were subject. Jacobs crafted her narrative, in accordance with the mainstream literary genre of the sentimental domestic novel, as an embodiment of cherished cultural values such as the desirability of marriage and the sanctity of personal identity, home, and family. She did so because she was writing to the free women of her day ?the principal readers of domestic novels ?in the hopes that they would sympathize with and come to understand her unique predicament as a female slave. By applying these conventions of the genre to her situation, Jacobs demonstrates to her readers that family and domesticity are no less prized by those forced into slavery, thus leading her free readers to perceive those values within a broader social context.
Some critics have argued that, by conforming to convention, Jacobs shortchanged her own experiences; one critic, for example, claims that in Jacobs's work the purposes of the domestic novel overshadow those of the typical slave narrative. But the relationship between the two genres is more complex: Jacobs's attempt to frame her story as a domestic novel creates a tension between the usual portrayal of women in this genre and her actual experience, often calling into question the applicability of the hierarchy of values espoused by the domestic novel to those who are in her situation. Unlike the traditional romantic episodes in domestic novels in which a man and woman meet, fall in love, encounter various obstacles but eventually marry, Jacobs's protagonist must send her lover, a slave, away in order to protect him from the wrath of her jealous master. In addition, by the end of the narrative, Jacobs's protagonist achieves her freedom by escaping to the north, but she does not achieve the domestic novel's ideal of a stable home complete with family, as the price she has had to pay for her freedom is separation from most of her family, including one of her own children. Jacobs points out that, slave women view certain events and actions from a perspective different from that of free women, and that they must make difficult choices that free women need not. Her narrative thus becomes an antidomestic novel, for Jacobs accepts readily the goals of the genre, but demonstrates that its hierarchy of values does not apply when examined from the perspective of a female slave, suggesting thereby that her experience, and that of any female slave, cannot be fully understood without shedding conventional perspectives.
It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that the critics mentioned in line 23 hold which one of the following views?
A. The mixture of literary genres in a single narrative often creates a useful tension that adds value to the narrative.By the year 2030, the Earth's population is expected to increase to 10 billion; ideally, all would enjoy standards of living equivalent to those of present-day industrial democracies. However, if 10 billion people consume critical natural resources such as copper, nickel, and petroleum at the current per capita rates of industrialized countries, and if new resources are not discovered or substitutes developed, such an ideal would last a decade or less. Moreover, projections based on the current rate of waste production in many industrialized countries suggest that 10 billion people would generate enough solid waste every year to bury a large city and its surrounding suburbs 100 meters deep.
These estimates are not meant to predict a grim future. Instead they emphasize the incentives for recycling, conservation, and a switch to alternative materials. They also suggest that the traditional model of industrial activity, in which individual manufacturing processes take in raw materials and generate products to be sold plus waste to be disposed of, should be transformed into a more integrated model: an industrial ecosystem. In such a system the consumption of energy and materials is optimized, wastes and pollution are minimized, and the effluents of one process ?whether they are spent catalysts from petroleum refining or discarded plastic containers from consumer products ?serve as the raw material for another process.
Materials in an ideal industrial ecosystem would not be depleted any more than are materials in a biological ecosystem, in which plants synthesize nutrients that feed herbivores, some of which in turn feed a chain of carnivores whose waste products and remains eventually feed further generations of plants. A chunk of steel could potentially show up one year in a tin can, the next year in an automobile, and 10 years later in the skeleton of a building. Some manufacturers are already making use of "designed offal" in the manufacture of metals and some plastics: tailoring the production of waste from a manufacturing process so that the waste can be fed directly back into that process or a related one. Such recycling still requires the expenditure of energy and the unavoidable generation of some wastes and harmful by-products, but at much lower levels than are typical today. The ideal industrial ecosystem, in which there is an economically viable role for every product of a manufacturing process, will not be attained soon; current technology is often inadequate to the task. However, if industrialized nations embrace major and minor changes in their current industrial practices and developing nations bypass older, less ecologically sound technologies, it should be possible to develop a more closed industrial ecosystem that would be more sustainable than current industrial practices, especially in the face of decreasing supplies of raw materials and-increasing problems of waste and pollution
The author of the passage would most probably agree with which one of the following statements about the use of "designed offal" (line 38)?
A. It is a harmful step that requires the consumption of critical natural resources and results in the generation of waste and harmful by-products.Nowadays, the certification exams become more and more important and required by more and more enterprises when applying for a job. But how to prepare for the exam effectively? How to prepare for the exam in a short time with less efforts? How to get a ideal result and how to find the most reliable resources? Here on Vcedump.com, you will find all the answers. Vcedump.com provide not only LSAC exam questions, answers and explanations but also complete assistance on your exam preparation and certification application. If you are confused on your LSAT-TEST exam preparations and LSAC certification application, do not hesitate to visit our Vcedump.com to find your solutions here.