Business and economics

Time allowed: 40 minutes. Write one essay in English. First read the brief introduction to the issue and the three perspectives that follow it. Essay Task: Answer the question posed in the introduction in a single, well-organized essay. Make your own perspective on the issue clear and develop it, and analyze how your perspective relates to at least one of the perspectives given (it may agree with one fully or partly, combine elements of several, or differ from all three). Support your ideas with sound reasoning and specific examples, present them in a logical order, and write in clear, correct standard written English. The position you choose does not affect how your essay is evaluated. Planning Your Essay (optional; notes are not scored): What does each kind of business contribute to a street? Who gains and who loses if trucks are pushed away? Is there a rule that would be fair to both?

Food Trucks and Neighborhood Restaurants

In many towns, food trucks park along busy streets and sell meals for less than the sit-down restaurants nearby. Restaurant owners, who pay rent and property taxes on their buildings, sometimes ask city councils to keep trucks a set distance away from their doors. Food truck owners reply that customers should be free to choose where they eat. Should cities limit where food trucks can operate in order to protect established restaurants?

Perspective One Restaurants invest heavily in a neighborhood: they sign long leases, pay property taxes all year and stay open in bad weather. It is unfair to let a truck with none of those costs park outside their door and take their lunch customers.

Perspective Two Competition benefits customers. If a truck offers better food or lower prices, a restaurant should respond by improving, not by asking the city to remove its rival.

Perspective Three The real question is how shared public space is used. Cities should set rules about noise, trash and crowded sidewalks that apply equally to every business, but those rules should not be written to favor one kind of business over another.