Jay: Of course there are many good reasons to support the expansion of preventive medical care, but arguments claiming that it will lead to greater societal economic gains are misguided. Some of the greatest societal expenses arise from frequent urgent-care needs for people who have attained a long life due to preventive care.
Sunil: Your argument fails because you neglect economic gains outside the health care system: society suffers an economic loss when any of its productive members suffer from preventable illness.
Sunil's response to Jay makes which of the following assumptions?

Economist: Paying extra for fair-trade coffee——coffee labeled with the Fairtrade logo——is intended to help poor farmers, because they receive a higher price for the fair-trade coffee they grow. But this practice may hurt more farmers in developing nations than it helps. By raiding average prices for coffee, it encourages more coffee to be produced than consumers want to buy. This lower prices for no-fair-trade coffee and thus lowers profits for non-fair-trade coffee farmers.

To evaluate the strength of the economist’s argument, it would be most helpful to know which of the following?

Which of the following most logically completes the argument?
A photograph of the night sky was taken with the camera shutter open for an extended period. The normal motion of stars across the sky caused the images of the stars in the photograph to appear as streaks. However, one bright spot was not streaked. Even if the spot were caused, as astronomers believe, by a celestial object, that object could still have been moving across the sky during the time the shutter was open, since ____________.

 A certain species of desert lizard digs tunnels in which to lay its eggs. The eggs must incubate inside the tunnel for several weeks before hatching, and they fail to hatch if they are disturbed at any time during this incubation period. Yet these lizard guard their tunnels for only a few days after laying their eggs.
Which of the following, if true, most helps explain why there is no need for lizards to guard their tunnels for more than a few days?

Archaeologists working in the Andes Mountains recently excavated a buried 4,000-year-old temple containing structures that align with a stone carving on a distant hill to indicate the direction of the rising sun at the summer solstice. Alignments in the temple were also found to point toward the position, at the summer solstice, of a constellation known in Andean culture as the Fox. Since the local mythology represents the fox as teaching people how to cultivate and irrigate plants, the ancient Andeans may have built the temple as a religious representation of the fox.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument is based?

While the total enrollment of public elementary and secondary schools in Sondland is one percent higher this academic year than last academic year, the number of teachers there increased by three percent. Thus, the Sondland Education Commission's prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the claim that the prediction of a teacher shortage as early as next academic year is unfounded?

Editorial: consumers in North America think that by drinking frozen concentrated orange juice, they are saving energy, because it takes fewer truckloads to transport it than it takes to transport an equivalent amount of not-from-concentrate juice. But they are mistake, for the amount of energy require to concentrate the juice is far greater than the energy difference in the juices’ transport.

Which of the following, if true, would provide the greatest additional support for the editorial’s conclusion?

Which of the following most logically completes the argument given ?

Asthma, a chronic breathing disorder, is significantly more common today among adult competitive swimmers than it is among competitive athletes who specialize in other sports. Although chlorine is now known to be a lung irritant and swimming pool water is generally chlorinated, it would be rash to assume that frequent exposure to chlorine is the explanation of the high incidence of asthma among these swimmers, since           ________.

NorthAir charges low fares for its economy-class seats, but it provides very cramped seating and few amenities. Market research shows that economy passengers would willingly pay more for wider seating and better service, and additional revenue provided by these higher ticket prices would more than cover the additional cost of providing these amenities. Even though NorthAir is searching for ways to improve its profitability, it has decided not to make these improvements.

Which of the following, if true, would most help to explain NorthAir’s decision in light of its objectives?

Veterinarians generally derive some of their income from selling several manufacturers’ lines of pet-care products. Knowing that pet owners rarely throw away mail from their pet’s veterinarian unread, one manufacturer of pet-care products offered free promotional materials on its products to veterinarians for mailing to their clients. Very few veterinarians accepted the offer, however, even though the manufacturer’s products are of high quality.

Which of the following, if true, most helps to explain the veterinarians’ reaction to the manufacturer’s promotional scheme ?