Instructions

Analyze the following passage and provide appropriate answers for the questions that follow.

The ways by which you may get money almost exception lead downwards. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job” but to perform well a certain work; and even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pays him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed. God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in God’s coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen. I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

Question 20

Which of the following would the author disagree most with?

Solution

In the first paragraph, the author mentions that to have done anything for which you earned money is to have been truly idle or worse. Here, the author’s perspective is that many forms of earning money are driven by self-interest and lower purposes, emphasizing work being done for love or intrinsic value rather than for monetary gain. Given this, the author would most likely disagree with the notion of doing work that is primarily motivated by money or that involves services or roles appealing to the public's desires in a superficial or materialistic way. Among the given options, Option D is the correct choice because betting in a casino involves gaining without effort.

Option A: This might be viewed as contributing positively to society by providing jobs

Option B: Advertising for a product like toothpaste appeals to commercial needs and might be seen as trivial or not serving a higher purpose, but the author would disagree more with Option D than the idea of advertising.

Option C: Business school can be seen as a place where one learns the tools to run businesses, which could involve both positive and negative motivations. The author need not necessarily disagree with others.

Option E: The author might criticize investment banking for focusing too much on monetary gain. However, it could still be seen as contributing to the economy in a way that gambling doesn't.


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