3. Governments have only one response to public criticism of socially necessary services: regulation of the activity of providing those services. But governments inevitably make the activity more expensive by regulating it, and that is particularly troublesome in these times of strained financial resources. However, since public criticism of child-care services has undermined all confidence in such services, and since such services are socially necessary, the government is certain to respond.

Which one of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?
(A) The quality of child care will improve.
(B) The cost of providing child-care services will increase.
(C) The government will use funding to foster advances in child care.
(D) If public criticism of policy is strongly voiced, the government is certain to respond.
(E) If child-care services are not regulated, the cost of providing child care will not increase


OA is

What is the difference between B and E. As E says, if services not regulated the cost will not increase which can be inferred from the para. B only says that the cost will increase, after assuming that the service will be regulated. Pl explain.

Reasoning: criticism, government response, regulation of activity, activity becomes more expensive and that is bad now.
There is criticism of child care services. The government will respond.
What will happen: the activity (child care) will be regulated and will become more expensive. We should find that in the answer choices. It should be specific to child care, since any other activity in general is already stated. What we can infer is the underlined section.

A. Maybe, maybe not. Can't infer that from the passage.
B. Yes, because the government will respond, will regulate the activity, and when that happens the costs increase.
C. Can't infer from the passage.
D. Is already stated in the passage and doesn't need to be inferred.
E. We can infer that if the government regulates the activity, the prices increase. But can't infer from the passage that otherwise the prices will not increase.

You see, we don't need to assume that the government will regulate the activity. According to the passage, that is exactly how the government reacts and the consequences are increase in prices. And the conclusion is that the government will respond, so we can certainly infer B.
But we can infer E, because there is no guarantee that prices will not increase if the activity is not regulated. The passage explains what happens when the government steps in, but doesn't tell us what happens otherwise. Anything could happen, we are not certain about that.

Imo B is the answer ...totally agree with cano.

I applied some lessons learnt - and even though this is a relatively easy problem IMO - the learning helped me narrow down the answer pretty quickly. In inference questions - the correct choice will be a paraphrase of some part or entire stimulus OR it could be a combination of two or more premises. Incorrect choices could be - likely true scenarios which may or may not happen. B is an exact paraphrase of the stimulus. E introduces a logically relevant scenario - but it may or may not happen based on evidence of the stimulus. Hence B.

b

thanks for the explanation guys.

The questions says

if regulated cost will increase. (R -> I) Negating this will be (~I -> ~R)

Choice E says if not regulated cost will not increase (~R -> ~I) which isn't correct.

for me is pretty straightfoward without too much overcalculation:

But governments inevitably make the activity more expensive by regulating it

so:

A) we do not know, maybe or not, but the question we know is a MUST BE true question

C) funding--> we didn't talk about funding

D) a simply restate of the argument

E) will not increase-> but here the cost will increase

B) is the answer ....

Kudos if you want
_________________

KUDOS is the good manner to help the entire community.