Early administrative decisions in China’s Ming Dynasty eventually caused a drastic fall in tax revenues, a reduction in military preparedness, the collapse of the currency system, and failed to make sufficient investment in vital transportation infrastructure.

(A) the collapse of the currency system, and failed : Parallelism broken( a drastic,a reduction,the collapse => all nouns).Again, Early decisions failed to make investment : Meaning error as decisions can't be able to invest itself.
(B) the collapse of the currency system, and failing : Failure is preferred to failing
(C) and the collapse of the currency system, also failed : Early decisions failed to make investment : Meaning error as decisions can't be able to invest itself. Moreover, fragment error.
(D) the collapse of the currency system, as well as failing Failure is preferred to failing
(E) and the collapse of the currency system, as well as a failure: Correct

Hi
Can any expert please help me in this question:

The decisions have failed to make investments in infrastructure.
This sentence is incorrect because it doesnot make sense. Decisions cannot fail. Administration/person can.

The decisions have caused a failure to make investments in infrastructure.
If the above is not logical, why is this sentence correct?
how could decision cause a failure.
This is option E of the above question.

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Hi, maybe is me but I do not consider this a 700 level.

A bit of common sense (which must be kept always by the student during the examination of a question and mainly the reason is the following: these questions are there to test your skills, true. However, they also reflect what is the grammar, the style that evolves in the real world) should suggest you:

Today I washed the car and did chores, as well as I went to the dentist. Lot of stuff

Reading the question piece by piece


Early administrative (just a description) decisions (key point) in China’s Ming Dynasty eventually (inthe end) caused a drastic fall

1) first point: tax revenues,

2) second point: a reduction in military preparedness,

3) third point: and the collapse of the currency system,

4) as well as a failure: the fourth point which is positioned on the same level of importance of the first three.

I do not even spend the time to analyze the options A-B-C. At most to D just of being sure.

Regards
_________________

Great question with a lot of complex stuff going on. A (somewhat?) effective hack for me esp with tough SC questions is to sort of really focus on what the main subject of the sentence is and take it from there. Often a lot of words are added to confuse us in to forgetting the basics. This was my thought process for this question:

The non-underlined portion is talking about the early DECISIONS taken by Ming Dynasty administrators, its a little subtle I guess but all the elements of the list, the fall in tax revenues, collapse of currency, etc. have been directly caused by the .... DECISIONS

Now you'll see why I am emphasizing this point, the phrase "administrative decisions" (actually administrative is modifying decisions here if you want to be picky) is the subject of the sentence. What ever is happening is "caused" by decisions. Some POE explanations might make this point a little clearer:

(A) the collapse of the currency system, and failed - "Early administrative decisions of the Ming Dynasty....failed to make sufficient investment"? Decisions can't fail to do anything. Decisions don't do anything themselves or you could say they are not the noun that performs the action. Eliminate.
(B) the collapse of the currency system, and failing - Again, the decisions are failing to do something? That is not possible, the decisions can fail in achieving something, but decisions can not logically perform an action. Eliminate
(C) and the collapse of the currency system, also failed - "decisions also failed" same problem, decision cannot fail in of itself, Eliminate.
(D) the collapse of the currency system, as well as failing - "the decisions....(were) failing!?" that is nonsensical, refer to above reasoning please. Eliminate.
(E) and the collapse of the currency system, as well as a failure - much better, decisions cannot perform an action but they can be deemed to be failure. In this case the decisions led to a failure of adequate infrastructure investment and that makes total sense.

E is your answer then.