2015 AP® SEMINAR END-OF-COURSE QUESTIONS AND SOURCES

AP SEMINAR
SECTION II
Time — 90 minutes

Directions: Read the four sources carefully, focusing on a theme or issue that connects them and the different
perspective each represents. Then, write a logically organized, well-reasoned, and well-written argument that
presents your own perspective on the theme or issue you identified. You must incorporate at least two of the sources
provided and link the claims in your argument to supporting evidence. You may also use the other provided sources
or draw upon your own knowledge. In your response, refer to the provided sources as Source A, Source B, Source C,
or Source D, or by the author’s name.

Write your response in the Section II: Free Response booklet.

Source A

From “Credit in China: A Culture of Consumer Spending?”

(Knowledge@Wharton, January 31, 2013)

“I’m a little embarrassed.” Liu Jing leaned in closer and lowered her voice, revealing for the first time a hint of
discomfort since the topic of credit cards had been broached. After a pause, she smiled, took a breath and said, “but
let’s chat.”

Liu was born in Henan, a province in central China 600 miles northwest of Shanghai. Despite coming from a solidly
working-class family, she was encouraged to study hard as a child and prepare for the gao kao, China’s rigorous
college-placement examination. She received high marks and earned a coveted position at a public university in
Beijing . . . [after which] she landed a position as a junior executive at a digital advertising firm. . . .

Soon after entering the workforce, however, Liu began to grapple with economic reality. Her salary barely covered
her rent and other basic necessities. She also realized that with Western friends came lifestyle choices. If she wanted
to maintain her English skills, she would have to be comfortable accompanying her Western friends to restaurants
and bars, which meant additional spending.

On the back of a napkin, Liu spelled out her financial conundrum. As a junior executive, she netted 5,000 RMB
(US $800) a month after taxes. From this, she paid 2,000 RMB (US $320) per month in rent for a shared flat near
Beijing’s fourth ring road. This left her with 3,000 RMB (US $480) a month in disposable income, or 100 RMB
(US $16) a day. With this sum, she had to cover her remaining living expenses. Liu tried to stretch her income as best
she could, but when she suddenly lost her job due to a company acquisition, she was hard-pressed to make ends meet.

At this moment, a friend recommended that Liu apply for a UnionPay credit card from one of China’s large
state-owned banks. She was hesitant at first, given the Chinese cultural tendency to avoid borrowing, but this was the
help she needed. As she was no longer employed and was in a weak position to apply for a line of credit, she begged
a friend in the accounting department of her former company to forge the necessary documents to show she was still
employed and had a monthly income. Begrudgingly, her friend helped. A month later, Liu had her first credit card.

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 2015 AP® SEMINAR END-OF-COURSE QUESTIONS AND SOURCES

At first, Liu used the card to make ends meet. She would borrow against her credit at the beginning of the month and
pay off most of the balance within 30 days. But as time went on, the allure of this “extra” income and the social
benefits it allowed compelled Liu to slowly increase her borrowing. She soon discovered that borrowing is a slippery
slope. . . .

A Variety of Credit Options

MasterCard projects that annual credit card spending in China will more than double by 2025, and over the next
decade, the country is expected to become the largest credit card market in the world by number of issued cards,
overtaking the United States. Although the figure is high, it is worth noting that in China, credit cards are still used
mostly for large-ticket items, while cash is still the predominant payment method for smaller purchases. . . .

. . . China’s rapidly aging population and the government’s one-child policy have created a “sandwich generation”:
those married with a young child and aging parents who have significant financial responsibilities that lead to higher
credit card use. A Jiao Tong University study also examined attitude factors that drive credit card use, concluding
that “social power,” the desire to display material wealth, played a significant role in the willingness to take on debt.
These findings point to the adoption of Western consumer-centric attitudes and the shedding of traditional reluctance
to take on debt among young, urban Chinese.

From Knowledge@Wharton, January 31, 2013. © 2013 Knowledge@Wharton. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of
the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.

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 2015 AP® SEMINAR END-OF-COURSE QUESTIONS AND SOURCES

Source B

From “Poverty Facts and Stats”

by Anup Shah (Globalissues.org, January 7, 2013)

• At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

• More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials
are widening.
• The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income.
The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.
• According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly
in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience
of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more
invisible in death.” . . .
• In 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption.
The poorest fifth just 1.5%:

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• The poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% and the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all
[private] consumption:

• The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million
people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
• World gross domestic product (world population approximately 6.5 billion) in 2006 was
$48.2 trillion in 2006.
• The world’s wealthiest countries (approximately 1 billion people) accounted for $36.6
trillion dollars (76%).
• The world’s billionaires—just 497 people (approximately 0.000008% of the world’s
population)—were worth $3.5 trillion (over 7% of world GDP).
• Low income countries (2.4 billion people) accounted for just $1.6 trillion of GDP (3.3%).

• Middle income countries (3 billion people) made up the rest of GDP at just over $10 trillion
(20.7%).
• The world’s low income countries (2.4 billion people) account for just 2.4% of world
exports.
• The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8
trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.”

• . . . [A]bout 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s financial assets
in 2004.
• A conservative estimate for 2010 finds that at least a third of all private financial wealth,
and nearly half of all offshore wealth, is now owned by the world’s richest 91,000
people—just 0.001% of the world’s population.

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 2015 AP® SEMINAR END-OF-COURSE QUESTIONS AND SOURCES
• The next 51 percent of all wealth is owned by the next 8.4 million—just 0.14% of the
world’s population. Almost all of it has managed to avoid all income and estate taxes,
either by the countries where it has been invested and or where it comes from.

• For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment.
• [Fifty-one] percent of the world’s . . . hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.
• The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any
industrialized nation.
• The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted
directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money.
• In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of
the poorest 20%—in 1997, 74 times as much.
An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest
countries was about:
a. 3 to 1 in 1820
b. 11 to 1 in 1913
c. 35 to 1 in 1950
d. 44 to 1 in 1973
e. 72 to 1 in 1992

• Consider the global priorities in spending in 1998:

Global Priority $ U.S. Billions

Cosmetics in the United States 8
Ice cream in Europe 11
Perfumes in Europe and the United States 12
Pet foods in Europe and the United States 17
Business entertainment in Japan 35
Cigarettes in Europe 50
Alcoholic drinks in Europe 105
Narcotic drugs in the world 400
Military spending in the world 780

• And compare that to what was estimated as additional costs to achieve universal access to
basic social services in all developing countries:

Global Priority $ U.S. Billions

Basic education for all 6
Water and sanitation for all 9
Reproductive health for all women 12
Basic health and nutrition 13
Used with permission of Globalissues.org. (http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats)

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Source C

“Professional Middle-class Couple, 1927” by Adam Kirsch

What justifies the inequality

That issues her a tastefully square-cut
Ruby for her finger, him a suit
Whose rumpled, unemphatic dignity
Declares a life of working sitting down,
While someone in a sweatshop has to squint
And palsy sewing, and a continent
Sheds blood to pry the gemstone from the ground,
Could not be justice. Nothing but the use
To which they put prosperity can speak
In their defense: the faces money makes,
They demonstrate, don’t have to be obtuse,
Entitled, vapid, arrogantly strong;
Only among the burghers do you find
A glance so frank, engaging, and refined,
So tentative, so conscious of its wrong.

Photograph by August Sander, Professional Middle-class Couple [Bürgerliches

berufstätiges Ehepaar] [Dr. A. Herbig, Jr., and His Wife, Cologne], Gelatin
silver print, 21.9 x 17 cm (8 5/8 x 6 11/16 in.) Mounted (original beige
mount): 42.2 x 33.8 cm (16 5/8 x 13 5/16 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Poem used with permission of Adam
Kirsch.

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 2015 AP® SEMINAR END-OF-COURSE QUESTIONS AND SOURCES

Source D

From “The Gospel of Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie (1889)

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living,
shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and
after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to
administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best
calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community—the man of wealth thus becoming the mere
agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience and ability to
administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves. . . .
In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the
means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may
rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by alms-giving. . . .

. . . [T]he best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can
rise—parks, and means of recreation, by which men are helped in body and minds; works of art, certain to give
pleasure and improve the public taste, and public institutions of various kinds, which will improve the general
condition of the people;—in this manner returning their surplus wealth to the mass of their fellows in the forms best
calculated to do them lasting good.
Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of
distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a
season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better
than it could or would have done for itself. The best minds will thus have reached a stage in the development of the
race in which it is clearly seen that there is no mode of disposing of surplus wealth creditable to thoughtful and
earnest men into whose hands it flows save by using it year by year for the general good. This day already dawns. . . .

Such, in my opinion, is the true Gospel concerning Wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the
problem of the Rich and the Poor, and to bring “Peace on earth, among men Good-Will.”

STOP

END OF EXAM

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