Movie directors sometimes shoot two endings to a film, undecided about which to use until the very last minute. In the Casablanc

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问题     Movie directors sometimes shoot two endings to a film, undecided about which to use until the very last minute. In the Casablanca everyone knows, Ingrid Bergman leaves Humphrey Bogart, but in another ending Bogart got the girl.
    In some ways, it feels like we’re in the middle of a movie made by some deranged economist, and we don’ t know yet if we’ re going to get the happy ending or the sad one. Does the rise of India and other developing countries supercharge global growth, or will all the new competition pull down wages in the industrialized world? Is this period going to be titled the The Bright Dawn or The Big Squeeze?
    Certainly for workers in the industrialized world, the latest signs are troubling. Profits seem to be outpacing wages just about everywhere. As a result, from Japan to the US to Europe, labor is getting a smaller share of the economic pie. The numbers are pretty straightforward: In Japan, the share of national income going to workers dropped from 53.1 percent in 2001 to 51.1 percent in the year ending with the first quarter of 2005. In the US, the employee share of gross domestic income dropped from 58 percent to 56.8 percent. In Western Europe, workers’ share of national income dropped from 51.7 percent in 2001 to 50.5 percent at the end of 2004, before bouncing up a bit in the latest quarter.
    An obvious and pessimistic explanation for this broad decline is the intensification of global competition, forcing formerly privileged workers in advanced countries to accept a lower standard of living. Harvard economist Richard Freeman has argued that the entry of China, India, and the former Soviet countries into the global economy has effectively doubled the size of the world’ s workforce. As a result, labor is relatively abundant, capital is relatively scarce, the returns to labor go down, and the returns to capital go up.
    "Having twice as many workers and newly the same amount of capital places great pressure on labor markets throughout the world," writes Freeman. That "shifts the balance of power in markets toward capital, as more workers compete for working than capital."
    This is the unhappy ending to the global economy story. However, the numbers are also consistent with another, much more upbeat ending. It could be that corporate restructuring efforts in Japan and Europe are finally taking hold, leading to higher profits and faster productivity growth, even as US companies continue their efforts to boost efficiency. And it could be that there’s just a lag before the productivity gains get passed on to workers in the form of higher wages.
    So, will we get the happy ending or the sad ending? There’ s no way of telling yet—but hey, what fun is a movie with a predictable ending?
What will probably happen to workers in developed countries in the happy ending?

选项 A、They will get higher wages.
B、They will have less competition.
C、They will get a bigger share of the national income.
D、They will enjoy a faster increase in payment.

答案A

解析 由题干定位到第六段最后一句。在生产力收益以高工资形式让工人受益之前,工资相对低只是暂时的落后(just a lag)。因此选A。B项原文未提及。工资水平的提高并不能说明其占国家收入的比例会提高,因此C不符。也不能说明工资的增长会加快,D不符。
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