Official group for VARC | CAT Prep 2020

MBA
66

#Para Jumble

  1. The risks involved in conveying the honesty of good intentions in this way, however, are often prohibitive enough that no self-regarding state will ordinarily undertake them.
  2. For such reassurance to have been effective, both countries would have had to make costly sacrifices that increased each one’s vulnerability to the other, thereby conclusively proving their benignity.
  3. But that only proves why the United States and China could never assure each other sufficiently to realize the common gains that otherwise supposedly lay within reach.
  4. To do so would imply a dereliction of duty, a disavowal of U.S. interests, and a disregard of U.S. allies.
  5. Both the Bush and the Obama administrations pursued such realist policies in more or less effective ways—and, obviously, they could not do otherwise.


67

  

# Mark the Odd Sentence:

1. Strictly speaking of course we know nothing about prehistoric man, for the simple reason that he was prehistoric.

2. His body may have been evolved from the brutes; but we know nothing of any such transition that throws the smallest light upon his soul as it has shown itself in history.

3. For instance, I have pointed out the difficulty of keeping a monkey and watching it evolve into a man.

4. In this sketch, therefore, of man in his relation to certain religious and historical problems, I shall waste no further space on these speculations on the nature of man before he became man.

5. Unfortunately the same school of writers pursue the same style of reasoning when they come to the first real evidence about the first real men. 

68

#Misfits

A. American transcendentalism is essentially a kind of practice by which the world of facts and the categories of common sense are temporarily exchanged for the world of ideas and the categories of imagination. 

B. The transcendentalists reversed this procedure.

C. The point of this exchange is to make life better by lifting us above the conflicts and struggles that weigh on our souls. 

D. As these chains fall away, our souls rise to heightened experiences of freedom and union with the good.

69

#Parajumbles


 1. A problem with both groups is that they typically define “modernity” in a reductionistic manner, as if the modern world were moving in a single general direction.
2. In that respect, traditionalists and postmodernists are in broad agreement.
3. Modernity actually contains opposing potentialities, encompassing, among other things, lingering and evolving ancient beliefs and practices.
4. Intellectuals of very different persuasions relate many of society’s present troubles to so-called “modernity.”
5. They exclude from the definition whatever is appealing to them. 

70

#Misfits

(A)Instead, they’d been wrongly assuming that they completely understood how gravity works.

(B)We have been here before.

(C)In the early 1980s, the Israeli physicist Mordehai ‘Moti’ Milgrom questioned the increasingly popular dark matter narrative. 

(D)His ideas build on quantum physics as well, viewing space-time and the matter within it as originating from an interconnected array of quantum bits

(E)While working at an institute south of Tel Aviv, he studied measurements by Rubin and others, and proposed that physicists hadn’t been missing matter.

71

#Para Jumble

 (A) This means there is perhaps less to learn from comparison with these older technologies than there is with the technology text messages have so often, at least among younger generations, come to replace — telephone calls.

(B)) The text message arrives so quickly that the sender is, at least potentially, present to the receiver.

(C) The difference between those older means and today’s text message is not just one of speed, however.

(D) That is, text messages involve telepresence — presence over a distance.

(E) Messages composed of text, of course, predate digitized text messages by some time: telegrams, letters, and stone tablets all involve communication over time and distance by conveyance of the written word. 

72

#Misfits

A. The engineering sector has made huge advances in becoming a better place for women to work in recent years.

B. Women must be part of the solution to that problem.

C. Flexible working is becoming much more commonplace in the industry as a whole, and female role models in senior positions are more visible. 

D. Unconscious bias training and mentorships are also helping but there’s still a huge gap in the supply of talent in the industry, with many engineers approaching retirement and a lack of pipeline to replace them.

E. Retaining women should be a focus through returners’ schemes, coaching, flexible working and addressing the gender pay gap so that women are not penalised for taking time off to care for children

73

 *An unusual RC set*

  

Recently, an old friend of mine who also is under the bondage of a commercial bank, confessed to me he has been contemplating digging a well in the backyard of his house. The gushing fool that I am, I broke into an impromptu lecture about the deteriorating quality of underground water in the cities, advising him to go for packaged water instead. But he was looking to dig a dry well, he protested. He was trying to get away from his employer on weekends, holidays and ungodly hours.

I remember how he was one of the first adopters of the social media, the erstwhile Orkut and the ilk and the current rage, Facebook and WhatsApp. In an awakening of sorts, his paymasters had barged into his social media accounts. Continuing his wail, he said he didn’t know how to put it, except that his private space had started resembling a town in the Middle East Asia ravaged by fatwas of totalitarian forces. He left me in no doubt he would give his right hand to reduce his WhatsApp account to an ionic dust. He eventually stopped to ask me how the sun shone over the patch of earth I inhabited. That was how I was reminded of the opus of Haruki Murakami, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the one in which the protagonist steps down a deep, abandoned well, time and again, to forge a passage into a surrealistic world in search of answers to the social and spiritual problems tearing him apart. Indeed, it was as if he were split into two and a vital lump of ‘something’ bonding the halves had been prised out of him. After a bout of swinging between existence and semi-existence, he would slip into an elaborate, subcutaneous hotel where he would meet many other figures some of which were faceless while others preferred to remain in the dark, with a few exceptions. The shadows and voices down there were nothing short of riddles, but some of those he would meet there were the nefarious avatars of people he loved or hated the most, including himself. These were influences and emotions that were churning his life into a cosmic lump of dirt.

In Murakami’s book, the protagonist finds a baseball bat and bludgeons whatever it was that had been bothering him. I went on to summarize the contents of the book to my friend, which was not an easy job in itself, whereupon he blurted that it seemed to be a symbolic solution rather than real. I said, true, but that was how the protagonist managed to unravel the knots in his life, or at least that is how it looked like when I last read the story.

I kept thinking about the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle long after his phone call. It is a multi-layered book, bristling with symbolisms and motifs, obliterating the boundaries between the conscious and the subconscious, the physical and the metaphysical, the present and the past, and perhaps the future too.  One moment you are treading the beaten path of everyday life and the next thing you have is a shallow water blackout. The funny (and sad) thing is you are partly aware of what is happening, realising this had been the larger truth all along and the little path you were used to was only a part of the landscape, almost a ruse.

1) Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?

(a) The protagonist in the book Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a symbolic baseball player.

(b) Consistency of underground water in the cities has degraded over the years.

(c) Haruki Murakami’s book has left a lasting impression on the author’s mind.

(d) It is not uncommon for people to experience spilt personality disorder due to conflicting demands of private and public life.

2) Which of the following, if true, will refute the core theme of the passage?

(a) The book was originally written in Japanese and later on translated in English.

(b) Intrusion into private space of a person is necessary to help people experiencing psychological turmoil.

(c) Social media presents an unparalleled set of tools to stalk someone.

(d) Author’s friend is an incompetent person who needs constant monitoring by his employer. 

3) Which of the following can be reasonably concluded after reading the passage?

(a) In the book, the protagonist is beset by the intrusion of his employers into his private space through tools of social media.

(b) Obliterating the boundaries between the conscious and the subconscious is the best method to cope with anxiety and depressions.

(c) The book attempts to depict deep internal conflicts of humans through its protagonist who resorts to unconventional methods of coping with his afflictions.

(d) It is recommended to resort to delusions to resolve the worst conflicts of one’s life.

4) Which of the following statements the author is least likely to agree with?

(a) It is important to draw a protective line around one’s private life.

(b) People working for highly competitive organisations will not experience excessive follow-up for performance.

(c) It is not uncommon to find parallels of one’s predicament in works of fiction.

(d) Using social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp is a healthy practice.

5) Which of the following statements best summarizes the passage?

(a) The passage is a promotional write up for Haruki Murakami’s book.

(b) Excessive demands of modern-day life can lead to personality disintegration.

(c) It is vital to have reasonable balance between your private life and public roles.

(d) It’s possible to correct the imbalance in different spheres of life through meditation. 


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Humble requests to: @TheVerbalMentor @achyut1989


74

*The Odd Sentence*


A) Adolescence is a nightmare, I don’t know why they say it’s a wonderful time.

(B) Adolescence is the time when intimate relationships are established and maintained, as you move toward a mature sense of self and purpose.

(C) But your parents still think of you as a little kid, they’re still moulding you.

(D) It’s like you are under some kind of bell jar where no one can reach you.

(E) You’re irrational, You’re awkward, you’re doing everything in your power to stand out, you’re vulnerable from all sides.

75

Which AIMCATS has better VARC year 2017 or 2018?


76

AIMCAT VS SIMCAT VS CL for VARC?


77

RC Practice Series - Day 46

Two divergent definitions have dominated sociologists’ discussions of the nature of ethnicity. The first emphasizes the primordial and unchanging character of ethnicity. In this view, people have an essential need for belonging that is satisfied by membership in groups based on shared ancestry and culture. A different conception of ethnicity de-emphasizes the cultural component and defines ethnic groups as interest groups. In this view, ethnicity serves as a way of mobilizing a certain population behind issues relating to its economic position. While both of these definitions are useful, neither fully captures the dynamic and changing aspects of ethnicity in the United States. Rather, ethnicity is more satisfactorily conceived of as a process in which preexisting communal bonds and common cultural attributes are adapted for instrumental purposes according to changing real-life situations.

One example of this process is the rise of participation by Native American people in the broader United States political system since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. Besides leading Native Americans to participate more actively in politics (the number of Native American legislative officeholders more than doubled), this movement also evoked increased interest in tribal history and traditional culture. Cultural and instrumental components of ethnicity are not mutually exclusive, but rather reinforce one another.

The Civil Rights movement also brought changes in the uses to which ethnicity was put by Mexican American people. In the 1960’s, Mexican Americans formed community-based political groups that emphasized ancestral heritage as a way of mobilizing constituents. Such emerging issues as immigration and voting rights gave Mexican American advocacy groups the means by which to promote ethnic solidarity. Like European ethnic groups in the nineteenth-century United States, late-twentieth-century Mexican American leaders combined ethnic with contemporary civic symbols. In 1968 Henry Cisneros, then mayor of San Antonio, Texas, cited Mexican leader Benito Juarez as a model for Mexican Americans in their fight for contemporary civil rights. And every year, Mexican Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo as fervently as many Irish American people embrace St. Patrick’s Day (both are major holidays in the countries of origin), with both holidays having been reinvented in the context of the United States and linked to ideals, symbols, and heroes of the United States.

1. Which of the following best states the main idea of the passage?

(A) In their definitions of the nature of ethnicity, the two dominant approaches used by sociologists are deficient and this deficiency calls for an entirely new approach to understanding the phenomenon.

(B) Ethnicity is best defined as a dynamic process that combines cultural components with shared political and economic interests.

(C) In the United States in the twentieth century, ethnic groups began to organize in order to further their political and economic interests.

(D) Ethnicity in the United States has been significantly changed by the demands of changing times.

2. Which of the following statements about the first two definitions of ethnicity discussed in the first paragraph is supported by the passage?

(A) One is supported primarily by sociologists, and the other is favored by members of ethnic groups.

(B) One emphasizes the political aspects of ethnicity, and the other focuses on the economic aspects.

(C) One is the result of analysis of United States populations, and the other is the result of analysis of European populations.

(D) One focuses more on the genealogical components of ethnicity than does the other.

3. The author of the passage refers to Native American people in the second paragraph in order to provide an example of

(A) the ability of membership in groups based on shared ancestry and culture to satisfy an essential human need

(B) how ethnic feelings have both motivated and been strengthened by political activity

(C) how the Civil Rights movement helped promote solidarity among United States ethnic groups

(D) how participation in the political system has helped to improve a group’s economic situation

4. The passage supports which of the following statements about the Mexican American community?

(A) In the 1960’s the Mexican American community began to incorporate the customs of another ethnic group in the United States into the observation of its own ethnic holidays.

(B) In the 1960’s Mexican American community groups promoted ethnic solidarity primarily in order to effect economic change.

(C) In the 1960’s leader of the Mexican American community concentrated their efforts on promoting a renaissance of ethnic history and culture.

(D) In the 1960’s members of the Mexican American community were becoming increasingly concerned about the political issues of the time

5. Which of the following types of ethnic cultural expression is discussed in the passage?

(A) The retelling of traditional narratives

(B) The wearing of traditional clothing

(C) The playing of traditional music

(D) The celebration of traditional holidays

6. The author of this passage is least likely to agree with which of the following statements?

(A) The idea of ethnicity is ever evolving and ever adapting

(B) The idea of ethnicity is conducive to giving political expression to a group

(C) Bloodline has little role to play in ethnic solidarity

(D) The cultural components of ethnicity are no less important than the political or economic components are.

78

  *Mark the Superfluous Sentence*

  a) Since the beginning of sport competition, athletes have sought to acquire the skills and knowledge of sport in order to become ‘champions’.

b) At first, an intense conscious effort and attention are necessary to learn every nuance of technique and timing. 

c) The experience of athletes, whatever their innate gifts, is only to be acquired by years of dedicated practice and training. 

d) But at some point basic skills and their neural representation become so ingrained in the nervous system as to be almost second nature, no longer in need of conscious effort or decision.

e) One level of brain activity may be working automatically, while another, the conscious level, is fashioning a perception of time, a perception which is elastic and can be compressed or expanded. 

79

RC Practice - day 48 | History | Sociology 

In the 1920s and 1930s the Pullman Company was one of the largest single employers of black people and had created an image for itself of enlightened benevolence via financial support for black churches, newspapers, and other organizations. It also paid many porters well enough to have a middle-income lifestyle and prominence within their own communities.

Working for the Pullman Company was, however, less glamorous than the image the company promoted. Porters depended on tips for much of their income and thus on the generosity of white passengers who often referred to all porters as "George", the first name of George Pullman, the company's founder. The company required porters to travel 11,000 miles, nearly 400 hours, per month to earn a basic wage. In 1934, porters on regular assignments worked an average of over 73 hours per week and earned 27.8 cents an hour while workers in manufacturing jobs averaged under 37 hours per week and earned an average of 54.8 cents per hour. They spent roughly ten percent of their time in unpaid "preparatory" and "terminal" set-up and clean-up duties, and they had to pay for their food, lodging, and uniforms, which could consume up to half of their wages. They were also charged whenever their passengers stole a towel or a water pitcher. Porters could ride at half fare on their days off — but not on Pullman coaches. They were not eligible for promotion to conductor, a job reserved for whites, despite frequently performing some of the conductor duties.

When A. Philip Randolph assumed the leadership of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, he began a ten-year battle to win recognition from the Pullman Company. In 1935 the Brotherhood became the first Black union recognized by a major corporation. Randolph’s efforts in the battle helped transform the attitude of Black workers toward unions and toward themselves as an identifiable group; eventually, Randolph helped to weaken organized labor’s antagonism toward Black workers.

In the Pullman contest Randolph faced formidable obstacles. The first was Black workers’ understandable skepticism toward unions, which had historically barred Black workers from membership. An additional obstacle was the union that Pullman itself had formed, which weakened support among Black workers for an independent entity.

The Brotherhood possessed a number of advantages, however, including Randolph’s own tactical abilities. In 1928 he took the bold step of threatening a strike against Pullman. Such a threat, on a national scale, under Black leadership, helped replace the stereotype of the Black worker as servant with the image of the Black worker as wage earner. In addition, the porters’ very isolation aided the Brotherhood. Porters were scattered throughout the country, sleeping in dormitories in Black communities; their segregated life protected the union’s internal communications from interception. That the porters were a homogeneous group working for a single employer with single labor policy, thus sharing the same grievances from city to city, also strengthened the Brotherhood and encouraged racial identity and solidarity as well. But it was only in the early 1930’s that federal legislation prohibiting a company from maintaining its own unions with company money eventually allowed the Brotherhood to become recognized as the porters’ representative.

Not content with this triumph, Randolph brought the Brotherhood into the American Federation of Labor, where it became the equal of the Federation’s 105 other unions. He reasoned that as a member union, the Brotherhood would be in a better position to exert pressure on member unions that practiced race restrictions. Such restrictions were eventually found unconstitutional in 1944.

1. According to the passage, by 1935 the skepticism of Black workers toward unions was

(A) unchanged except among Black employees of railroad-related industries

(B) reinforced by the actions of the Pullman Company’s union

(C) mitigated by the efforts of Randolph

(D) weakened by the opening up of many unions to Black workers. 

2. In using the word “understandable” (para 4), the author most clearly conveys

(A) sympathy with attempts by the Brotherhood between 1925 and 1935 to establish an independent union

(B) concern that the obstacles faced by Randolph between 1925 and 1935 were indeed formidable

(C) ambivalence about the significance of unions to most Black workers in the 1920’s

(D) appreciation of the attitude of many Black workers in the 1920’s toward unions.

3.The passage suggests which of the following about the response of porters to the Pullman Company’s own union?

(A) Few porters ever joined this union.

(B) Some porters supported this union before 1935.

(C) Porters, more than other Pullman employees, enthusiastically supported this union.

(D) The porters’ response was most positive after 1935. 

4.The passage suggests that if the grievances of porters in one part of the United States had been different from those of porters in another part of the country, which of the following would have been the case?

(A) It would have been more difficult for the Pullman Company to have had a single labor policy.

(B) It would have been more difficult for the Brotherhood to control its channels of communication.

(C) It would have been more difficult for the Brotherhood to build its membership.

(D) It would have been easier for the Pullman Company’s union to attract membership. 

5.The passage suggests that in the 1920’s a company in the United States was able to

(A) use its own funds to set up a union

(B) require its employees to join the company’s own union

(C) develop a single labor policy for all its employees with little employee dissent

(D) pressure its employees to contribute money to maintain the company’s own union 

6.The passage supplies information concerning which of the following matters related to Randolph?

(A) The steps he took to initiate the founding of the Brotherhood

(B) His motivation for bringing the Brotherhood into the American Federation of Labor

(C) The influence he had on the passage of legislation overturning race restrictions in 1944

(D) The influence he had on the passage of legislation to bar companies from financing their own unions 

80

'It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.'

(Haruki Murakami)

81

"I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of inflections   

Or the beauty of innuendoes,   

The blackbird whistling   

Or just after."

(Wallace Stevens)

82

RC Practice- day 50

The Archean Eon began about 4 billion years ago with the formation of Earth’s crust and extended to the start of the Proterozoic Eon 2.5 billion years ago; the latter is the second formal division of Precambrian time. The Archean Eon was preceded by the Hadean Eon, an informal division of geologic time spanning from about 4.6 billion to 4 billion years ago and characterized by Earth’s initial formation. Records of Earth’s primitive atmosphere and oceans emerge in the earliest Archean (Eoarchean Era). Fossil evidence of the earliest primitive life-forms—prokaryotic microbes from the domain called Archaea and bacteria—appears in rocks about 3.5–3.7 billion years old; however, the presence of ancient fragments of graphite (which may have been produced by microbes) suggest that life could have emerged sometime before 3.95 billion years ago. Archean greenstone-granite belts contain many economic mineral deposits, including gold and silver.

According to a recent theory, Archean-age gold-quartz vein systems were formed over two billion years ago from magnetic fluids that originated from molten granite-like bodies deep beneath the surface of the Earth. This theory is contrary to the widely held view that the systems were deposited from metamorphic fluids, that is, from fluids that formed during the dehydration of wet sedimentary rocks.

The recently developed theory has considerable practical importance. Most of the gold deposits discovered during the original gold rushes were exposed at the Earth’s surface and were found because they had shed trails of alluvial gold that were easily traced by simple prospecting methods. Although these same methods still lead to an occasional discovery, most deposits not yet discovered have gone undetected because they are buried and have no surface expression.

The challenge in exploration is therefore to unravel the subsurface geology of an area and pinpoint the position of buried minerals. Methods widely used today include analysis of aerial images that yield a broad geological overview; geophysical techniques that provide data on the magnetic, electrical, and mineralogical properties of the rocks being investigated; and sensitive chemical tests that are able to detect the subtle chemical halos that often envelop mineralization. However, none of these high-technology methods are of any value if the sites to which they are applied have never mineralized, and to maximize the chances of discovery the explorer must therefore pay particular attention to selecting the ground formations most likely to be mineralized. Such ground selection relies to varying degrees on conceptual models, which take into account theoretical studies of relevant factors.

These models are constructed primarily from empirical observations of known mineral deposits and from theories of ore-forming processes. The explorer uses the models to identify those geological features that are critical to the formation of the mineralization being modeled, and then tries to select areas for exploration that exhibit as many of the critical features as possible.

1. According to the passage, the popular view of Archean-age gold-quartz vein systems is that such systems

(A) were formed from metamorphic fluids

(B) originated in magnetic molten granite-like bodies

(C) were formed from alluvial deposits

(D) generally have surface expression.

2. The passage implies that which of the following steps would be the first performed by explorers who wish to maximize their chances of discovering gold?

(A) Surveying several sites known to have been formed more than two billion years ago

(B) Limiting exploration to sites known to have been formed from metamorphic fluid

(C) Using an appropriate conceptual model to select a site for further exploration

(D) Using geophysical methods to analyze rocks over a broad area. 

3. Which of the following statements about discoveries of gold deposits is supported by information in the passage?

(A) The number of gold discoveries made annually has increased between the time of the original gold rushes and the present.

(B) New discoveries of gold deposits are likely to be the result of exploration techniques designed to locate buried mineralization.

(C) It is unlikely that newly discovered gold deposits will ever yield as much as did those deposits discovered during the original gold rushes.

(D) Modern explorers are divided on the question of the utility of simple prospecting methods as a source of new discoveries of gold deposits. 

4. The new theory relates to the conceptual models discussed in the passage in which of the following ways?

(A) It may furnish a valid account of ore-forming processes, and, hence, can support conceptual models that have great practical significance.

(B) It suggests that certain geological formations, long believed to be mineralized, are in fact mineralized, thus confirming current conceptual models.

(C) It suggests that there may not be enough similarity across Archean-age gold-quartz vein systems to warrant the formulation of conceptual models.

(D) It corrects existing theories about the chemical halos of gold deposits, and thus provides a basis for correcting current conceptual models 

5. According to the passage, methods of exploring for gold that are widely used today are based on which of the following facts?

(A) Most of the Earth’s remaining gold deposits are still molten.

(B) Most of the Earth’s remaining gold deposits are exposed at the surface.

(C) Most of the Earth’s remaining gold deposits are buried and have no surface expression.

(D) Only one type of gold deposit warrants exploration, since the other types of gold deposits are found in regions difficult to reach. 

6. It can be inferred from the passage that the efficiency of model-based gold exploration depends on all of the following, except?

(A) The closeness of the match between the geological features identified by the model as critical and the actual geological features of a given area

(B) Mineralization of the selected ground formation

(C) The degree to which the model chosen relies on empirical observation of known mineral deposits rather than on theories of ore-forming processes

(D) The degree to which the model chosen is based on an accurate description of the events leading to mineralization

83

#Paragraph Summary

When we think about art at the end of the 19th Century, who and what comes to mind? Monet and Impressionism, certainly. Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge, perhaps. Post-Impressionism, of course: Cézanne and his heavy-set cardplayers or Mont Sainte-Victoire shimmering on the horizon, magnificent and majestic; Gauguin in his Tahitian paradise; or the last ravishing landscapes of Van Gogh, who died just as the last decade of the century ­was getting into its stride. But when we think of the art that’s actually characterised as the art of the fin de siècle, particularly the last decade of that century, the mood changes, and it darkens. We think of the art of anxiety and angst, of drama and febrile tension, of an acute sense of alienation. And it’s all as far removed from Monet’s sun-dappled garden at Giverny as you can get.

A. While the artists of 19th century invoke positive emotions and visuals, the actual art that characterizes the period is dark and gloomy.

B. The art produced in the last decade of 19th century palpably offsets the art characteristic of the end of 19th century

C. The positive images brought to mind when we think of the art produced at the end of 19th century are in stark contrast to the dark and gloomy art that marks the period.

D. The tenor of art in the last decade of 19th century was absolutely different from that which characterized the end of 19th century in general.

84

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85

You might reasonably suppose that the more democratic a country’s institutions, the less inequality it should support. Rising inequality means that resources are concentrated in the hands of a few; they should be ever more easily outvoted by the majority who are left with a shrinking share of national income.

Indeed, some social scientists think that historical expansions of the franchise came as governments sought credible ways to assure voters that resources would be distributed more equitably. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that in the 19th century governments across the West faced the threat of socialist revolution. Mere promises of greater redistribution were insufficient to eliminate such threats; institutional guarantees were needed. Giving credible guarantees, they reckon, meant increasing the share of the population allowed to vote. Other researchers argue that anti-majoritarian institutions embedded within democratic systems, such as Britain’s House of Lords and America’s electoral college, were prized by elites not because they seemed likely to lead to better policies but because they served as a check on the egalitarian tendencies of the masses.

But studies of the relation between democracy and levels of inequality point in conflicting directions. Mr Acemoglu and Mr Robinson tackle the question in another paper, co-written with Suresh Naidu and Pascual Restrepo. They conclude that democracies raise more taxes than non-democracies do. But this does not translate reliably into lower levels of income inequality.

One possible reason for this disconnect is that people do not care much about inequality, or want their politicians to do anything about it. The results of surveys suggest otherwise, however. When asked by pollsters, more than two-thirds of Americans and Europeans express concern about current levels of inequality. Alternatively, the creaky wheels of Western democracies might have become too jammed to make progress on any issue of substance, whether inequality or some other persistent problem.

But this answer is also unsatisfying. The rich world has seen big policy shifts over the past decade. Last year America’s government managed to make a sweeping change to taxes—one that tilts the distribution of income even more in favour of the rich. And in a recent study of European politics, Derek Epp and Enrico Borghetto find that political agendas in Europe have become less focused on redistribution even as inequality has risen. Though both inequality and public concern about it are increasing, politicians seem less interested in grappling with the problem. 


According to Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, the redistribution of income was:

a. A necessary promise made by would-be governments.

b. The aim of socialist revolutions in the West in the 19th century.

c. Insufficient to eliminate the threats of socialist revolutions.

d. initiated in the West to thwart socialist revolutions.


What should be the answer to this question ?

Source SIMCAT TH 101