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As one of a rare group of economists who believe that "manufacturing matters" for the health of the American economy, I was hear

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问题     As one of a rare group of economists who believe that "manufacturing matters" for the health of the American economy, I was heartened to hear President Obama emphasize manufacturing in his State of the Union address. During the last two years, the manufacturing sector has led the economic recovery, expanding by about 10 percent and adding more than 300,000 jobs. Though there are economists who do not share my view, I believe that a strong manufacturing sector matters for several reasons.
    First, economists agree that the United States must rebalance growth away from consumption and imports financed by foreign borrowing toward exports. Manufactured goods account for about 86 percent of merchandise exports from the United States and about 60 percent of exports of goods and services combined. American manufacturing exports are becoming more attractive as a result of rising wages abroad, the decline in the dollar’ s value, increasing supply-chain coordination and transportation costs, and strong productivity growth in American manufacturing.
Germany and Japan, two high-wage countries, have maintained substantial shares of manufacturing in their economies, and are major exporters of manufactured goods to emerging market economies. Like manufacturing in these countries, manufacturing in the United States can win larger shares of global export markets with the right policies in place.
    Second, on average manufacturing jobs are high-productivity, high value-added jobs with good pay and benefits. In 2009, the average manufacturing worker earned $74,447 in annual pay and benefits compared with $63,122 for the average non-manufacturing worker. In that year, only about 9 percent of the work force was employed in manufacturing, down from about 13 percent in 2000. The fall in manufacturing employment during the 2000s was a major factor behind growing wage inequality and the polarization of job opportunities between the top and bottom of the wage and skill distribution, with a hollowing out of middle-income jobs.
    Third, manufacturing matters because of its substantial role in innovation. American leadership in science and technology remains highly dependent on R. & D. investment by manufacturing companies, and the social returns to such investment are substantial, far exceeding the returns to the companies that fund it.
    American multinational companies that account for about 84 percent of all private-sector business R. & D. in the United States still place about 84 percent of their R. & D. activities in the United States, often in clusters around research universities. But this share is gradually declining as American companies shift some of their R. & D. to Asia in response to rapidly growing markets, ample supplies of technical workers and engineers and generous subsidies. Congress’ s failure to extend and broaden the R. & D. tax credit, as President Obama has urged, is also encouraging companies in the United States to look to other countries offering far more generous R. & D. tax incentives.
In Paragraph 4, the author is mainly discussing______.
选项 A、the fall in employment rate in manufacturing sector
B、the income level of workers engaged in manufacturing
C、the wage inequality across different economic sectors
D、the growing productivity in manufacturing sector
答案B
解析 第四段第一句话就指出，制造业岗位通常具有很高的生产率和丰厚的薪酬福利，附加值较高。接着，下文将制造业工人的工资水平和其他行业工人的工资水平进行了对比。因此，这一段主要讨论的就是制造业工人的工资水平问题，[B]为正确答案。比较具有迷惑性的是[C]。作者比较不同经济部门之间的工资差异是为了说明制造业工人工资水平相当可观这样一个论点，因此，[C]只是作者论述的手段，不是论述的意图。[A]所说的生产制造部门就业率降低是一个事实，文中也有所论及，但不是作者在这一段中主要论述的问题。[D]提到的制造业的生产率并没有在第四段中进行讨论。
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