200 job losses is/are not a price worth paying [closed]

200 job losses is/are not a price worth paying

Is the singular or plural form more appropriate here, considering job losses is plural and price is singular?

Solution 1:

There have been other threads on ELU which have addressed notional agreement, but perhaps this one merits/needs individual treatment.

Notional agreement is the prioritising of agreement of the verb say with the etic rather than the formal number of the subject.

Almost all people would choose notional agreement with

200 dollars is all I can afford.

40 miles is too much for us to walk in a single day.

Gin and tonic is my favourite drink.

..............

Some people reject, others virtually insist on notional agreement with

England were beaten 1 - 0 this week. /

England was beaten 1 - 0 this week.

Though notional agreement and formal agreement both insist on

England has a very long coastline.

Again, some people reject, others accept notional agreement with

The staff is / are very friendly.

............

Notional agreement means:

choosing the singular verb-form where the subject is understood to be unitary even if not composed of a single element (a drink of gin and tonic, a distance of 40 miles, the country of England has a very long coastline, a health and safety policy ...)

but the plural verb-form where the subject is interpreted as consisting of discernable constituent parts (The players on the England team / England were beaten, the [members of the] staff are [all] very friendly ...).

Here, '200 job losses is/are not a price worth paying' is a rather unusual string. But it must surely be considered to correspond more closely to '$200 is not a price worth paying' than '200 jobs are lost each month'. Contrast '[The fact of] 200 job losses is unacceptable' with '200 job losses are unacceptable [but the other 33 are OK]'.