CAT Critical Reasoning Practice question with Solution 27

Rearranged, this stimulus becomes a simple logical chain, starting with the last sentence: child-care services are socially necessary and are being publicly criticized, therefore the government must respond. The government has only one response to criticism of socially necessary services, and that response is to regulate the activity providing that service. (Therefore, we can infer that the government will regulate the provision of child-care services.) Every time the government regulates an activity, it inevitably makes that activity more expensive. So finally, we can infer (B): the government will make the provision of child-care services more expensive.

(A) The stimulus makes no reference to any difference in the quality of services regulated by the government.

(C) We know the government will regulate child-care services, but we can’t be sure that means “fostering advances” in child care. Moreover, it’s not clear to what “funding” (C) refers; the stimulus never spoke of funding.

(D) goes beyond the scope. The stimulus said that the government inevitably responds to criticism of socially necessary services by regulation. The stimulus never referred to government response to criticism of policy in general.

(E) We know that if child-care services are regulated by the government, then their price will increase. Logically, we can’t simply negate both terms and infer that if the services aren’t regulated their price won’t increase.