2. 考研
  3. In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、

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问题 In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、D、E、F、G……) to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are several extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points)

    Last year’s economy should have won the Oscar for best picture. Growth in gross domestic product was 4.1 percent; profits soared; exports flourished; and inflation stayed around 3 percent for the third year.
    (41)______. Jobs insecurity was rampant. Even as they announced higher sales and profits, corporations acted as if they were in a tailspin, cutting 516,069 jobs in 2003 alone, almost as many as in the recession year of 1991. Yes, unemployment went down.
    But over one million workers were so discouraged they left the labor force. More than 6 million who wanted full-time work were only partially employed; and another large group was either overqualified or sheltered behind the euphemism of self-employment. We lost a million good manufacturing jobs between 1998 and 2002, continuing the trend that has reduced the blue-collar work force from about 30 percent in the 1950s to about half of that today. (42)______.
    All this happened in a country where people meet for the first time saying, "What do you do?" Then there is the matter of remuneration. The Labor Department recently reported that real wages fell 2.3 percent in the 12-month period ending this March. Since 1973, wages adjusted for inflation have declined by about a quarter for high school dropouts, by a sixth for high school graduates and by about 7 percent for those with some college education. Only the wages of college graduates are up, by 5 percent, and recently starting salaries, even for this group, have not kept up with inflation. While the top 5 percent of the population was setting new income records almost every year, poverty rates rose from 11 percent to 15 percent. (43)______.
    In previous business cycles, companies with rising productivity raised wages to keep labor. Is the historical link between productivity improvements and income growth served? (44)______. Just think that in 1976, 78 percent of auto workers and steel-workers in good mass production jobs were high school dropouts. But these jobs are disappearing fast. Education and job training are what count. These days college graduates can expect to earn 1.9 times the likely earnings of high school graduates, up from 1.45 times in the 1970s.
    (45)______. American males now toil about a week and a half longer than they did in 1973, the first time working hours have increased over an extended period of time. Women, particularly in poorer families, are working harder, too. Two-worker families rose by more than 20 percent in the 1990s. Seven million workers hold at least two jobs, the highest proportion in half a century. America is simply not growing fast enough to tighten the labor market and push up real wages.

A. Otherwise, an angry, disillusioned and frustrated population—whose rage today is focused on big government, excess taxes, immigration, welfare and affirmative action—may someday be brought together by its sense of diminished hopes. Then we will all be in for a very difficult time.
B. No wonder this is beginning to be called the Silent Depression. What is going on here?
C. The danger of the information age is that while in the short run it may be cheaper to replace workers with technology, in the long run it is potentially self-destructive because there will not be enough purchasing power to grow the economy.
D. So why did so many Americans give the picture a lousy B rating? The answer is jobs. The macroeconomic situation was good, but the microeconomic numbers were not. Yes, 3 million new jobs were there, but not enough of them were permanent, good jobs paying enough to sup-port a family.
E. The earning squeeze on middle-class and working-class people and the scarcity of "good, high-paying" jobs will be the big political issue. Americans have so far responded to their falling fortunes by working harder.
F. White-collar workers found out they were no longer immune. For the fist time, they were let go in numbers virtually equal to those for blue-collar workers. Many resorted to temporary work-with lower pay, fewer benefits and less status.
G. Of all the reasons given for the wage squeeze—international competition, technology, deregulation, the decline of unions and defense cuts—technology is probable the most crucial. It has favored the educated and skilled.

选项
答案E
解析 上文指出：美国男性现在的工作时间比1973年多了一周半，这是首次工作时间增加持续了很长一段时间。女性，尤其是较贫穷家庭的女性工作也更加努力。二十世纪九十年代，双职工家庭增加了20%多。七百万工人至少有两份工作，这是半个世纪以来的最高值。由此可知本题内容与美国人的工作状况相关。选项E中"Americans have so far responded to their falling fortunes by working harder"与后面的working harder相呼应。此外，"The earning squeeze"与上文中提到的"wage squeeze"相呼应，故是本题答案。A项意思是"否则，愤怒的、幻想破灭的、有挫折感的人有一天可能会被逐渐破灭的希望感带到一起，目前他们的愤怒主要集中于庞大的政府、多余的税收、移民、福利以及赞助行动。这样一来，我们所有人的日子都不好过了"。本文谈到了美国的经济表现，人们对此不满的原因：就业问题和工资问题，但是文中没有提到人们对此的强烈反响。A项中的otherwise表示选择关系，显然，按照语义逻辑关系，这项之前应该有表示如何解决就业问题和工资问题的内容。而文中却没有出现这方面内容，故此项为干扰项。C项意为"信息时代的危险在于从短期来看用技术代替工人成本降低，但长期而言，具有潜在的自我毁灭性，这是因为缺乏足够的购买力以推动经济增长"。显然，本项前面应该提到信息时代用技术代替工人降低成本的问题。但全文中只在倒数第二段提到了technology，是在指出有技能的工人薪水高的时候提到的，并没有涉及其他内容，因此C项不符合文章的语义逻辑关系，也是干扰项。
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