My first ever attempt to a question in forums, wish me luck 🤞
The faith in business-led philanthropy propagated by the entrepreneurs and the top executives of profit-making enterprises hides the harsher reality that businesses are uncompromisingly chasing efficiency, relentlessly cutting costs, shifting jobs to
cheaper places or opting for cheaper employee benefit schemes, and then recycling some portion of the profits into perks for the employees.Let's look at A and D firstQuote:
A. cheaper places or opting for cheaper employee benefit schemes, and then recycling
Correct choice
No error(s) as such. Meaning-wise "then" before "recycling" implies that recycling is the conclusive step of the list, literally meaning that: after cutting costs by the various means mentioned, the businesses are recycling some portion of the profits earned into incentives for the employees.
Quote:
D. cheaper places, opting for cheaper employee benefit schemes, and then recycling
Very subtle, the structure is: The faith... blah blah... hides the reality that businesses are
doing W,
doing X,
doing Y,
opting for something, and then
doing Z.
"opting for cheaper employee benefit schemes"- It would be better if it were framed as "opting cheaper employee benefit schemes" then it would be perfectly parallel to the remaining list (doing <something>). But as such it seems, very possibly and illogically meaning-wise, as a modifier modifying the preceding noun in the list(i.e., Y), and, hence, is not the best possible option.
Quote:
B. places that are cheaper and opting for cheaper employee benefit schemes, and then recycle
"Places that are cheaper" is wordy; recycle(verb) is not grammatically parallel to the rest of the items(nouns) in the list
Quote:
C. cheaper places or are opting for cheaper employee benefit schemes, and then also recycling
Parallelism is flawed; "then also recycling" slightly distorts the meaning by saying that on top of the activities that precede the businesses also do this[recycle], the intended meaning of this part of the sentence is to convey a process that: ...businesses are cutting costs and then recycling the profits into perks for the employees
Quote:
E. places, cheaper, or to opt for employee benefit schemes that are cheaper, and then recycling
This one's a disaster in terms of parallelism "to opt" is illogically parallel to ...shifting jobs "to places, cheaper". "Employee benefit schemes that are cheaper" is wordy and indirect, instead of the direct "cheaper employee benefit schemes"
Thank you for reading!