Q.Classify each of the following statements as Positive or Normative, giving a reason:

Positive statements state facts that can be checked against data; normative statements express value judgements using words like 'should' or 'unfair'.

(a) Positive — a factual, checkable statistic. (b) Normative — uses 'should', a policy value judgement. (c) Positive — a testable cause-effect claim. (d) Normative — uses 'unfair', a value judgement.

1. Positive. This is a factual statistic about the unemployment rate that can, in principle, be checked against official labour-force data — it does not pass any judgement on whether 5% unemployment is good or bad.
2. Normative. The word 'should' signals a policy recommendation based on a value judgement about what the government OUGHT to do — even if we could measure the factual effect of a tax cut on spending, whether the government SHOULD act on it is a value question.
3. Positive. This is a testable cause-and-effect claim about the economy ('a rise in X causes Y') that can be checked against empirical studies, even though the claim itself might later be confirmed or refuted by more data.
4. Normative. The word 'unfair' expresses a value judgement about the fairness of an outcome — a claim about what OUGHT to be the case, not a testable fact.
   ✓Final answer

   (a) Positive (b) Normative (c) Positive (d) Normative — the presence of words like 'should' or 'unfair' is the clearest signal of a normative statement.

Students sometimes treat any statement containing a NUMBER as automatically 'positive' — but a statement like 'the government should ensure unemployment falls below 3%' contains a number and is STILL normative, because of the word 'should'; the test is whether the statement can be verified by data alone, not whether it contains statistics.