When Milton's Car Won't Start One Morning, He Assumes That

question 147

Multiple Choice

When Milton's car won't start one morning, he assumes that the battery is dead because in his schema of cars, dead batteries are the cause for not starting. After Milton charges his battery and is still unable to start his car, he realizes that the problem is with the transmission. Even though his schema caused Milton to waste time doing the wrong thing, it is still adaptive because:

• A) he only found the transmission problem by trying to charge the battery
• B) charging the battery is usually the right solution to the problem
• C) it is easier to charge a battery than it is to fix the transmission
• D) it gave him a place to start in solving the problem

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Definitions:

Excise Tax

An indirect tax charged on the sale of a particular good or service, often included in the price of products like gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco.

Marginal Cost (MC) Curves

Graphs showing the cost of producing one additional unit of a good, illustrating how the cost varies with the level of output.

Diminishing Returns

A rule in economics that holds that after reaching a certain level, further investments in a specific sector will not yield higher returns if all other conditions stay the same.