Question ID:PT24 S3 Q17 Passage:The widespread staff reductions in a certain region's economy are said to be causing people who still have their jobs to cut back on new purchases as though they, too, had become economically distressed.  Clearly, however, actual spending by such people is undiminished, because there has been no unusual increase in the amount of money held by those people in savings accounts. Stem:The argument in the passage proceeds by doing which one of the following? Correct Answer Choice:AChoice A:concluding that since an expected consequence of a supposed development did not occur, that development itself did not take place Choice B:concluding that since only one of the two predictable consequences of a certain kind of behavior is observed to occur, this observed occurrence cannot, in the current situation, be a consequence of such behavior Choice C:arguing that since people's economic behavior is guided by economic self-interest, only misinformation or error will cause people to engage in economic behavior that harms them economically Choice D:arguing that since two alternative developments exhaust all the plausible possibilities, one of those developments occurred and the other did not Choice E:concluding that since the evidence concerning a supposed change is ambiguous, it is most likely that no change is actually taking place