| Critical Reasoning Butler: March 2025 |
| March 4 | CR 1 | CR 2 |
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CR 1 The federal government of Byrcenstein has noted that an increasing amount of the funding it provides to its province-level initiatives is lost to misappropriations. Provinces with oversight institutions that monitor federal spending within the province are much less likely to see the misappropriation of federal funds than are other provinces. Consequently, the federal government, as part of an effort to reduce misappropriation, will offer additional funding to every province that sets up such an oversight institution.
Which of the following, if true, provides the strongest indication that the plan is likely to achieve its goal?
A. In five years or so, the additional funding that the federal government of Byrcenstein will be offering will amount to more than the cost of setting up an oversight institution to monitor federal spending within the province.
B. The number of provinces that have reported the misappropriation of federal funding in the past year is higher for Byrcenstein than for other countries.
C. The reduction in the risk of the misappropriation due to the establishment of oversight institutions is greatest when only a few provinces have such institutions.
D. Currently, the federal government of Byrcenstein cannot legally decrease the amount of funding it provides to its province-level initiatives.
E. The amount of funding that is provided to province-level initiatives by the federal government of Byrcenstein and lost to misappropriations has been higher for certain types of initiatives than for others.
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CR 2 The easier it is to use public domain characters in an original work of art, the more artists choose to do so, and works of art that feature public domain characters usually cost less to produce than do works that feature copyrighted characters. Therefore, if the government ends any of limitations presently in place on the usage of public domain characters, such as removing the limitation forbidding the use of certain characters of significant cultural value, production costs of such artwork will decrease.
If the statements above are true, which of the following must be true?
A. If the limitations forbidding the use of certain characters of significant cultural value are ended, more artists will feature public domain characters in their work.
B. The entertainment industry will produce more works if there are fewer limitations on the use of public domain characters.
C. Some works of art that feature public domain characters will cost more to produce if the characters used are of significant cultural value.
D. If more works of art that feature public domain characters are produced, some works of art that do not do so will also cost less to produce.
E. If the only limitation on the use of public domain characters were those that apply to every public domain creation, most artists would feature public domain characters in their works.