Can you interpret these sentences. Friendship is seen with some justification as a private matter, but the strong links between friendship and other social goods including better health, more effectiv

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Can you interpret these sentences. Friendship is seen with some justification as a private matter, but the strong links between friendship and other social goods including better health, more effective careers, and higher life satisfaction should be enough to merit greater attention from decision-makers. So what are the political implications of these observations? Perhaps the best politicians can aim for is not to make things worse for friendship.But political institutions can improve or worsen the conditions in which friendship are formed. Can you make it clear for me the general concept of this paragraph? Whay does the writer mean by saying social goods? Does it mean that friendship can have good resaults in their partners health benefits and also please interpret what are the politians observations and explain those parts. Thank you

Oct 8, 2015 6:04 PM

Answers · 11

The general concept is that the writer claims if you have friends you will have a better quality of life. They use social goods to mean things that are important in life, but not material goods, and the writer uses the example of health, career satisfaction, etc. Therefore politicians should not do things that impact badly on friendships.

October 8, 2015

1. "Social good" is a term in economics. A social good consists of a good or a service that is capable of being enjoyed by most people and the consumption of which generates some benefits to society. Examples are clean air, justice and equality. 2. "Better health, more effective careers and higher life satisfaction" are not "social goods". They are "private benefits". 3. Social goods give rise to social benefits. Social goods are not themselves social benefits. A no smoking law is a social good. Lower public hospital expenditure resulting from lower incidence of smoking-induced cancer is a social benefit. 4. There are strict established definitions of these terms, which are used in economic analysis. They cannot and should not be arbitrarily interchanged or interpreted. 5. The writer of this passage is very confused about these terms. 6. The writer's assertion that political institutions can affect friendship is rather far-fetched, except when we are talking about the mass persecution and white terror that existed in certain totalitarian states during periods of nationwide class struggle. People dropped all their friends as each was required to "unmask" others as "enemies of class struggle", "revisionist pigs", "enemies of the proletariat revolution" or "enemies of the state". 7. Can you give the names of the author and the publication? 8. This passage came up as "English learning material" over the past few years in as diverse web sites as those based in Hong Kong and Russia. 9. A reasonably educated man would and should be very sceptical of its value either as English learning material or as learned economic writing, for the reasons above. 10. Who gave this to you as learning material?

October 8, 2015