Most people in the United States view neither big nor small business

hmmm...

Let us look at choice E:


Choice E is discussing people in the United States. What did the passage tell us about Americans? Two things:

1) They regard both big and small businesses as providing consumers with fairly priced goods and services.
2) Most people [b]consistently [/b]perceive small business as a force for good in society (whereas big business is considered socially responsible only under certain conditions--namely, times of prosperity).

If both of these facts are true, then it must be true that:


If choice E were not true--if people in the US thought social responsibility has to do with ONLY provision of fairly priced goods and services--then, they wouldn't be able to think that small business is more consistently socially responsible than big business (because they both provide fairly priced goods and services). That is: if choice E were false, then either fact 1 or fact 2 would be false--a part of the passage would become falsified. But in inference questions, we must treat the entire passage as necessarily true. Thus, chioce E must be true.

TAKEAWAY:

We can use the denial test in inference questions to prove that a choice is correct (must be true) or that a choice is incorrect (could be false).

Wow!! Took me 2.23 min.
Got E.
All the other options are not mentioned in the passage.

Got E in 2:14....gotta buckle up fro such CRs..
I am glad that after spending so much time, atleast I got it right

2:21 ...> E :D
A: no clue to prove this
B: the passage talked about people's view not the real defectiveness of ...
C:some sort of shell game I guess
D: value for their money ? where in passage?
E:

?Hi experts KarishmaB GMATNinja MartyMurray

Could you please explain why option D is wrong?

(D) Even if people did not regard big business as providing consumers with value for their money, they would still regard it as socially responsible in times of general prosperity.

My reasoning is:
We have two sets of people which have a possibility of being mutually exclusive:

Set 1 = Most people...regard both as providing consumers with fairly priced goods and services.

Set 2 = Most people...big business is perceived as socially responsible only in times of prosperity.

Option D says if Set 1 did not regard big business as providing consumers with value for their money (fair value) then Set 2 would still regard it as socially responsible in times of general prosperity.
What is wrong with option D given Set 1 and Set 2 are probably mutually exclusive so their decisions should also be independent.

Am I making a mistake in assuming "value for their money" as "fair value" (given in the info)?

The problem with (D) is that it's a hypothetical.

We have no idea what people would think IF people did not regard big business as providing consumers with value for their money. Maybe they would still regard big business as socially responsible in times of general prosperity and maybe they wouldn't. The passage doesn't provide any evidence one way or the other.

With choice (E), we don't need to worry about hypothetical scenarios. The passage tells us the following:


The first one has nothing to do with prosperity. That means big business provides fairly priced goods and services regardless of whether or not there's prosperity. But big business is socially responsible ONLY in times of prosperity (according to most people in the US).

So, when there's a lack of prosperity, those people expect big business (1) to provide fairly priced goods and services and (2) to NOT be socially responsible. That implies that providing fairly priced goods and services does not make you socially responsible. That fits with (E).