Which statement represents a view of a supporter of the social safety net? a. individuals are responsible for their own retirement and health care choices.
b. government spending is wasteful and should be eliminated where possible.
c. it is unfair to expect the government to take care of things that are individual responsibilities.
d. people deserve to be protected from serious poverty.

The correct answer is option D. "People deserve to be protected from serious poverty". Social safety net is a collection of services provided by the state or other institution to aid people in need. The statement that people deserved to be protected from serious poverty concurs with the social safety net ideals. A practical example of social safety net is providing financial support to single mothers unable to work, expecting that their children would contribute to society in the future by bringing healthcare and education instead of leaving them in extreme poverty.

there are no options provided but you can choose among the following gender-neutral pronouns: zir, hir, eir, vis, tem, eir.

in the normal course of maintaining a pronoun-antecedent agreement, we could have used the words his or her but since we are also required to use gender-neutral language, we need to replace it with its equivalent gender-neutral pronoun.

the earth’s crust is broken into separate pieces called tectonic plates (fig. 7.14). recall that the crust is the solid, rocky, outer shell of the planet. it is composed of two distinctly different types of material: the less-dense continental crust and the more-dense oceanic crust. both types of crust rest atop solid, upper mantle material. the upper mantle, in turn, floats on a denser layer of lower mantle that is much like thick molten tar.

each tectonic plate is free-floating and can move independently. earthquakes and volcanoes are the direct result of the movement of tectonic plates at fault lines. the term fault is used to describe the boundary between tectonic plates. most of the earthquakes and volcanoes around the pacific ocean basin—a pattern known as the “ring of fire”—are due to the movement of tectonic plates in this region. other observable results of short-term plate movement include the gradual widening of the great rift lakes in eastern africa and the rising of the himalayan mountain range. the motion of plates can be described in four general patterns:

collision: when two continental plates are shoved together

subduction: when one plate plunges beneath another (fig. 7.15)

spreading: when two plates are pushed apart (fig. 7.15)

transform faulting: when two plates slide past each other (fig. 7.15)