warrior1991 wrote:
AndrewN VeritasKarishmaQuote:
C) spending on fuel subsidies could reach $40 billion dollars in 2013, compared with about $20 billion last year
Is the comparison correct in option C??
I thought spending in 2013 is compared with $20 billion.
Please help to clear this.
Hello,
warrior1991. The branching within the clause seems to be giving you some trouble here. At its heart, the answer choice is saying that
spending could reach X, compared with Y. That is, one value is correctly compared to another, and one year is correctly compared to another. The extra information about years in no way skews the dollar-to-dollar comparison and could not be placed anywhere else in as palatable a manner:
a)
spending on fuel subsidies could, in 2013, reach $40 billion dollars, compared with last year's $20 billion (Why does 2013 need to interrupt the sentence?)
b)
in 2013, spending on fuel subsidies could reach $40 billion dollars, compared with $20 billion last year(Why are the years at the bookends of the clause rather than placed in parallel? Also, this one does not join up well with the non-underlined part of the sentence.)
In this sort of construct, it is understood that
spending is being compared to
spending. If it would help to see everything:
C)
spending on fuel subsidies could reach $40 billion dollars in 2013, compared with about $20 billion [spent on fuel subsidies] last yearI hope this information proves useful to you. Thank you for thinking to ask.
- Andrew