Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Test - 19

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.

But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.

This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.

In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.

There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.

But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.

This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.

In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.

There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.

But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.

This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.

In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.

There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

For thousands of years, people have understood the pervasive hold that work has on our lives. Just this year, Netflix’s The One explicitly dramatized how the pride and power of careerism compete with love, romance, and familial pursuits. This sentiment also undergirds a standard movie trope: the father who works so much that he never sees his kids.

But while Hollywood knows that work—which is ultimately futile—is one of the chief threats to a meaningful life and a flourishing family, public policy in the United States treats both of those aspirations as irrelevant. In most advanced countries, birth rates are very low by both historical and contemporary global standards, and both ends of the political spectrum promote greater labour-force participation. Progressives focus on providing benefits explicitly aimed at supporting working parents, such as paid leave and public child care. Conservatives fixate on “welfare dependency,” and demand that the social safety net be structured to actively encourage work. From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.

This pervasive focus on work reflects broader attitudes in society. When countries on the whole shift toward valuing work more, birth rates fall. And, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects. Forced to choose between the family they want and the career they want, people are opting for the latter, nudged along by policymakers hoping to encourage work. All too often, people then end up in workplaces and on career paths hostile to family, and in social spheres whose norms treat work as meaningful and family as burdensome.

In countries with low incomes and short life expectancies, more work-focused attitudes are associated with higher fertility, perhaps because in these countries, material precarity and extreme poverty are very common. In India, Brazil, or Tanzania, assigning a lot of value to work makes a lot of sense given that the life prospects of people without work in lower-income countries are extremely bad in objective terms. But in highly developed countries—defined as those with a Human Development Index greater than 0.80—the relationship flips. In countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States, placing a high importance on work is unlikely to be associated with basic material needs and more likely to be associated with finding meaning or social prestige from work. Both men and women are deriving more value from work, which often directly competes with family for time and attention.

There are other problems associated with societies placing a high value on work. Policies that try to help families by routing benefits through employment, or giving extra benefits to working parents, will sow the seeds of their own failure. While some families will use public child care or paid parental leave to ease the achievement of their family goals, others will become more deeply enmeshed in workplaces that do not value family at all. Also, parents who are not employed—and therefore are locked out of policies designed to help working parents—may correctly perceive that they are facing discrimination on the basis of their family model.

Read the passage and answer the following questions:

When people outside of Asia think of Buddhism, they tend to think about just philosophy and meditation. Buddhists are often said not to have gods, wars or empires. Their religion isn’t about ritual or belief, but a dedicated exploration into what causes suffering and how to end it through meditation and compassion. Although there’s some basis for this image, Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism have been at pains for decades to show that it’s largely untrue, or at least very partial. The Buddhism that non-Buddhists know today is less an accurate vision of its history than a creation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In that time period, Buddhists and their sympathisers created this modernised Buddhism. They discarded from it the elements of Buddhist history that didn’t fit the rational, scientific worldview that accompanied colonisation and modernisation. In a remarkable feat of historical reinvention, Buddhism went from degraded other to uplifted saviour in a matter of decades

People who want to really understand Buddhism in all of its complexity should spend time in Buddhist countries, learn ancient and modern languages, and study the works of scholars who offer a more detailed history of Buddhism and Buddhists. But for those who are interested only in the modern version of Buddhism, I would offer this advice: take reincarnation seriously. Rethinking reincarnation isn’t unprecedented. And it’s worth recalling that part of the origin of Buddhism was to challenge prevailing theories of reincarnation in the place where Siddhartha Gautama was born. In these belief systems, some part of the person (which part is interpreted differently both across and within religious movements) would live on in a cycle of rebirth called samsara.

There’s also diversity of thought about the meaning of this cycle, but Gautama and his followers criticised a variety of their contemporaries’ ideas. One was the notion that only a few were able to leave this cycle and become part of the divine. Another was that the aim was, indeed, to become part of something. According to Gautama, everyone, regardless of their place of birth, is capable of exiting the cycle of reincarnation. And to do so doesn’t mean joining with something; it means disjoining entirely, or ‘extinguishing’ the fire of life. In one image, consciousness is like a flame being passed from candle to candle. After enlightenment, no more candles will be lit. More recently, Buddhists, as well as outsiders seeking to modernise Buddhism, have continued to reinterpret the doctrine of reincarnation for their own times.

Buddhism, then, began in part as a new set of views about reincarnation. And throughout its history, Buddhists have debated and expanded the potential for what reincarnation entails. For example, in Tibet, probably beginning in the 13th century, the doctrine of rebirth took a significant twist: it was used to identify the consciousness of a deceased monk in a newborn child, and thus grant to that child the religious and political title of the previous monk. This is the background for what became the tradition of the Dalai Lamas. Although this was based on the existing doctrine that someone who had achieved nirvana could ‘emanate’ their consciousness on Earth in order to guide humans to liberation, it took on a whole new meaning and history in Tibet.

Read the passage and answer the following questions:

When people outside of Asia think of Buddhism, they tend to think about just philosophy and meditation. Buddhists are often said not to have gods, wars or empires. Their religion isn’t about ritual or belief, but a dedicated exploration into what causes suffering and how to end it through meditation and compassion. Although there’s some basis for this image, Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism have been at pains for decades to show that it’s largely untrue, or at least very partial. The Buddhism that non-Buddhists know today is less an accurate vision of its history than a creation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In that time period, Buddhists and their sympathisers created this modernised Buddhism. They discarded from it the elements of Buddhist history that didn’t fit the rational, scientific worldview that accompanied colonisation and modernisation. In a remarkable feat of historical reinvention, Buddhism went from degraded other to uplifted saviour in a matter of decades

People who want to really understand Buddhism in all of its complexity should spend time in Buddhist countries, learn ancient and modern languages, and study the works of scholars who offer a more detailed history of Buddhism and Buddhists. But for those who are interested only in the modern version of Buddhism, I would offer this advice: take reincarnation seriously. Rethinking reincarnation isn’t unprecedented. And it’s worth recalling that part of the origin of Buddhism was to challenge prevailing theories of reincarnation in the place where Siddhartha Gautama was born. In these belief systems, some part of the person (which part is interpreted differently both across and within religious movements) would live on in a cycle of rebirth called samsara.

There’s also diversity of thought about the meaning of this cycle, but Gautama and his followers criticised a variety of their contemporaries’ ideas. One was the notion that only a few were able to leave this cycle and become part of the divine. Another was that the aim was, indeed, to become part of something. According to Gautama, everyone, regardless of their place of birth, is capable of exiting the cycle of reincarnation. And to do so doesn’t mean joining with something; it means disjoining entirely, or ‘extinguishing’ the fire of life. In one image, consciousness is like a flame being passed from candle to candle. After enlightenment, no more candles will be lit. More recently, Buddhists, as well as outsiders seeking to modernise Buddhism, have continued to reinterpret the doctrine of reincarnation for their own times.

Buddhism, then, began in part as a new set of views about reincarnation. And throughout its history, Buddhists have debated and expanded the potential for what reincarnation entails. For example, in Tibet, probably beginning in the 13th century, the doctrine of rebirth took a significant twist: it was used to identify the consciousness of a deceased monk in a newborn child, and thus grant to that child the religious and political title of the previous monk. This is the background for what became the tradition of the Dalai Lamas. Although this was based on the existing doctrine that someone who had achieved nirvana could ‘emanate’ their consciousness on Earth in order to guide humans to liberation, it took on a whole new meaning and history in Tibet.

Read the passage and answer the following questions:

When people outside of Asia think of Buddhism, they tend to think about just philosophy and meditation. Buddhists are often said not to have gods, wars or empires. Their religion isn’t about ritual or belief, but a dedicated exploration into what causes suffering and how to end it through meditation and compassion. Although there’s some basis for this image, Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism have been at pains for decades to show that it’s largely untrue, or at least very partial. The Buddhism that non-Buddhists know today is less an accurate vision of its history than a creation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In that time period, Buddhists and their sympathisers created this modernised Buddhism. They discarded from it the elements of Buddhist history that didn’t fit the rational, scientific worldview that accompanied colonisation and modernisation. In a remarkable feat of historical reinvention, Buddhism went from degraded other to uplifted saviour in a matter of decades

People who want to really understand Buddhism in all of its complexity should spend time in Buddhist countries, learn ancient and modern languages, and study the works of scholars who offer a more detailed history of Buddhism and Buddhists. But for those who are interested only in the modern version of Buddhism, I would offer this advice: take reincarnation seriously. Rethinking reincarnation isn’t unprecedented. And it’s worth recalling that part of the origin of Buddhism was to challenge prevailing theories of reincarnation in the place where Siddhartha Gautama was born. In these belief systems, some part of the person (which part is interpreted differently both across and within religious movements) would live on in a cycle of rebirth called samsara.

There’s also diversity of thought about the meaning of this cycle, but Gautama and his followers criticised a variety of their contemporaries’ ideas. One was the notion that only a few were able to leave this cycle and become part of the divine. Another was that the aim was, indeed, to become part of something. According to Gautama, everyone, regardless of their place of birth, is capable of exiting the cycle of reincarnation. And to do so doesn’t mean joining with something; it means disjoining entirely, or ‘extinguishing’ the fire of life. In one image, consciousness is like a flame being passed from candle to candle. After enlightenment, no more candles will be lit. More recently, Buddhists, as well as outsiders seeking to modernise Buddhism, have continued to reinterpret the doctrine of reincarnation for their own times.

Buddhism, then, began in part as a new set of views about reincarnation. And throughout its history, Buddhists have debated and expanded the potential for what reincarnation entails. For example, in Tibet, probably beginning in the 13th century, the doctrine of rebirth took a significant twist: it was used to identify the consciousness of a deceased monk in a newborn child, and thus grant to that child the religious and political title of the previous monk. This is the background for what became the tradition of the Dalai Lamas. Although this was based on the existing doctrine that someone who had achieved nirvana could ‘emanate’ their consciousness on Earth in order to guide humans to liberation, it took on a whole new meaning and history in Tibet.

Read the passage and answer the following questions:

When people outside of Asia think of Buddhism, they tend to think about just philosophy and meditation. Buddhists are often said not to have gods, wars or empires. Their religion isn’t about ritual or belief, but a dedicated exploration into what causes suffering and how to end it through meditation and compassion. Although there’s some basis for this image, Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism have been at pains for decades to show that it’s largely untrue, or at least very partial. The Buddhism that non-Buddhists know today is less an accurate vision of its history than a creation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In that time period, Buddhists and their sympathisers created this modernised Buddhism. They discarded from it the elements of Buddhist history that didn’t fit the rational, scientific worldview that accompanied colonisation and modernisation. In a remarkable feat of historical reinvention, Buddhism went from degraded other to uplifted saviour in a matter of decades

People who want to really understand Buddhism in all of its complexity should spend time in Buddhist countries, learn ancient and modern languages, and study the works of scholars who offer a more detailed history of Buddhism and Buddhists. But for those who are interested only in the modern version of Buddhism, I would offer this advice: take reincarnation seriously. Rethinking reincarnation isn’t unprecedented. And it’s worth recalling that part of the origin of Buddhism was to challenge prevailing theories of reincarnation in the place where Siddhartha Gautama was born. In these belief systems, some part of the person (which part is interpreted differently both across and within religious movements) would live on in a cycle of rebirth called samsara.

There’s also diversity of thought about the meaning of this cycle, but Gautama and his followers criticised a variety of their contemporaries’ ideas. One was the notion that only a few were able to leave this cycle and become part of the divine. Another was that the aim was, indeed, to become part of something. According to Gautama, everyone, regardless of their place of birth, is capable of exiting the cycle of reincarnation. And to do so doesn’t mean joining with something; it means disjoining entirely, or ‘extinguishing’ the fire of life. In one image, consciousness is like a flame being passed from candle to candle. After enlightenment, no more candles will be lit. More recently, Buddhists, as well as outsiders seeking to modernise Buddhism, have continued to reinterpret the doctrine of reincarnation for their own times.

Buddhism, then, began in part as a new set of views about reincarnation. And throughout its history, Buddhists have debated and expanded the potential for what reincarnation entails. For example, in Tibet, probably beginning in the 13th century, the doctrine of rebirth took a significant twist: it was used to identify the consciousness of a deceased monk in a newborn child, and thus grant to that child the religious and political title of the previous monk. This is the background for what became the tradition of the Dalai Lamas. Although this was based on the existing doctrine that someone who had achieved nirvana could ‘emanate’ their consciousness on Earth in order to guide humans to liberation, it took on a whole new meaning and history in Tibet.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

Why would 12 of the richest men in football, executives paid for their supposed prowess in managing global brand names such as Barcelona and Manchester United, screw up so badly? Why did they think the players, the fans, Uefa, Fifa and the national governments of Europe would let them walk away with a £4bn cartel, leaving the eviscerated corpse of ordinary football on the dressing room floor? As the European Super League plan lies in ruins, the answer is clear: capital. There’s too much of it chasing too little real economic value in the world.

Capitalism is confined within the oxygen tent of central bank money. The more central banks print money, the cheaper it is to borrow. And yet the real economy, its dynamism flattened after the 2008 crash and its capacity scarred by the Covid-19 pandemic, remains sluggish. So the free money created by governments - and yes, central banks are ultimately part of the state - can only flow upwards. A glance at the leaked details of the Super League proposal should provide a teachable moment about financialised monopoly capitalism. The aim was to create a cartel of clubs that would generate £4bn a year - double the revenue of the current European Champions League. Closing entry to the league was only half of the plan. The other half was to operate a US-style spending and salary cap, effectively forcing individual clubs and players into a semi-feudal relationship with the Super League itself. They would operate the same “capitalist communism” as the National Football League in the US - sharing the revenue more evenly than in a truly competitive competition.

The Super League used the Spanish courts - some of the most politicised and questionable in the developed world - to prevent Fifa and Uefa from blocking the move. But when the British political elite united in condemnation of the scheme - with Boris Johnson threatening to drop a “legislative bomb” - that was decisive. English football was at the epicentre of the Super League scheme because it is the most financialised, with major clubs already grabbed by asset strippers and riddled with the dodgy money of foreign magnates. It is the league in which fans have least control, but where players have gamed the system to achieve a high degree of autonomy, and political salience.

The “super league” idea has been around for more than 20 years. It will stay around because the US sports cartel model works. There is no international basketball, baseball or gridiron football for a reason: these are American-owned cartel sports, staged as a circus for global entertainment. They work because they embody the essential principles of monopoly capitalism: the cartel is more powerful than the companies within it; the companies more powerful than the employees (the players); and the consumers have no choice. The point about cartels, however, is that they kill capitalism, innovation, and choice. What we really need is public ownership, regulation, and control of the national football infrastructure.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

Why would 12 of the richest men in football, executives paid for their supposed prowess in managing global brand names such as Barcelona and Manchester United, screw up so badly? Why did they think the players, the fans, Uefa, Fifa and the national governments of Europe would let them walk away with a £4bn cartel, leaving the eviscerated corpse of ordinary football on the dressing room floor? As the European Super League plan lies in ruins, the answer is clear: capital. There’s too much of it chasing too little real economic value in the world.

Capitalism is confined within the oxygen tent of central bank money. The more central banks print money, the cheaper it is to borrow. And yet the real economy, its dynamism flattened after the 2008 crash and its capacity scarred by the Covid-19 pandemic, remains sluggish. So the free money created by governments - and yes, central banks are ultimately part of the state - can only flow upwards. A glance at the leaked details of the Super League proposal should provide a teachable moment about financialised monopoly capitalism. The aim was to create a cartel of clubs that would generate £4bn a year - double the revenue of the current European Champions League. Closing entry to the league was only half of the plan. The other half was to operate a US-style spending and salary cap, effectively forcing individual clubs and players into a semi-feudal relationship with the Super League itself. They would operate the same “capitalist communism” as the National Football League in the US - sharing the revenue more evenly than in a truly competitive competition.

The Super League used the Spanish courts - some of the most politicised and questionable in the developed world - to prevent Fifa and Uefa from blocking the move. But when the British political elite united in condemnation of the scheme - with Boris Johnson threatening to drop a “legislative bomb” - that was decisive. English football was at the epicentre of the Super League scheme because it is the most financialised, with major clubs already grabbed by asset strippers and riddled with the dodgy money of foreign magnates. It is the league in which fans have least control, but where players have gamed the system to achieve a high degree of autonomy, and political salience.

The “super league” idea has been around for more than 20 years. It will stay around because the US sports cartel model works. There is no international basketball, baseball or gridiron football for a reason: these are American-owned cartel sports, staged as a circus for global entertainment. They work because they embody the essential principles of monopoly capitalism: the cartel is more powerful than the companies within it; the companies more powerful than the employees (the players); and the consumers have no choice. The point about cartels, however, is that they kill capitalism, innovation, and choice. What we really need is public ownership, regulation, and control of the national football infrastructure.