Economist: If the belief were to become widespread that losing one's job is not a sign of personal shortcomings but ...

shunhe on July 5, 2020

Hi @kzman29,

Thanks for the question! So if we look carefully, the first sentence is just a really really long “if then” statement. And we know how to diagram those, because if X then Y is just X—>Y.

So now let’s take a look at what it’s saying exactly. If some belief about why people lose their jobs were to become widespread, then there’d be growth in societal demand for more government control of the economy. So here, we have

Belief —> More government control of economy

Then we’re told in the second sentences that extensive government control of the economy would lead to an economic disaster. In other words, if the government controlled the economy extensively, there’d be an economic disaster.

More government control of economy —> Economic disaster

And we can put these two statements together to get

Belief —> More government control of economy —> Economic disaster

In other words

Belief —> Economic disaster

And this is what (A) tells us. An increased knowledge of the causes of job loss could lead to economic disaster.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.