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  3. A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. Wh

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. Wh

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问题     A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world’s best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.
    It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea’s LG Electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America’s machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.
    All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.
    How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think tank in Washington, D C. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States."
The U.S. achieved its predominance after World War II because________.
选项 A、it had made painstaking efforts towards this goal
B、its domestic market was eight times larger than before
C、the war had destroyed the economies of most potential competitors
D、the unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy
答案C
解析 本题关键词是U. S和World WarⅡ，问题是：第二次世界大战后美国取得了优势地位的原因是什么?可以定位到第一段。根据第一段第四句，美国的繁荣是那些经济遭到战争破坏的欧亚各国(the Europeans and Asians)做梦也无法达到的，即战争摧毁了大部分潜在竞争对手(potential competitors)的经济，使美国获得了优势地位，因此，选项C与原文为相同含义，为正确选项。选项A正反混淆，根据第一句的内容，长期不费力气(effortless)就取得成功的历史可能是一种可怕的障碍，可知作者认为战后美国经济的成功是轻而易举的，并非选项中所说的美国付出了艰苦的(painstaking)努力。选项B偷换概念，原文说的是：它(美国)拥有比任何竞争者大八倍的市场，而选项说的是：美国国内市场比过去大八倍，该选项将比较对象than any competitor偷换成了than before。选项D出自第二、三句，美国工业经济规模发展到无与伦比的状态、它的工人是世界上技术最强的，该选项将unparalleled economies of scale的修饰对象industries偷换成workforce，并且文中也没有说劳动力规模对经济是否起到了推动作用，因此，选项D偷换概念。第一段：第二次世界大战后美国取得优势地位的各种原因。
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