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  3. In 1910, Henry Van Dyke wrote a book called The Spirit of America, which opened with this sentence: " The Spirit of America is b

In 1910, Henry Van Dyke wrote a book called The Spirit of America, which opened with this sentence: " The Spirit of America is b

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问题     In 1910, Henry Van Dyke wrote a book called The Spirit of America, which opened with this sentence: " The Spirit of America is best known in Europe by one of its qualities— energy. " This has always been true. Americans have always been known for their manic dynamism. Some condemned this ambition as a scrambling after money. Others saw it in loftier terms. But energy has always been the country’ s saving feature.
    So Americans should be especially alert to signs that the country is becoming less vital and assiduous. One of those signs comes to us from the labor market. According to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has a smaller share of prime age men in the work force than any other G-7 nation.
    Part of the problem has to do with human capital. More American men lack the emotional and professional skills they would need to contribute. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 35 percent of those without a high school diploma are out of the labor force, compared with less than 10 percent of those with a college degree. Part of the problem has to do with structural changes in the economy. Sectors like government, health care and high-tech have been growing, generating jobs for college grads. Sectors like manufacturing, agriculture and energy have been getting more productive, but they have not been generating more jobs. Instead, companies are using machines or foreign workers.
    The result is this: There are probably more idle men now than at any time since the Great Depression, and this time the problem is mostly structural, not cyclical. This is a big problem. It can’ t be addressed through the sort of short-term Keynesian stimulus some on the left are still fantasizing about. It can ’ t be solved by simply reducing the size of government, as some on the right imagine.
    It will probably require a broad menu of policies attacking the problem all at once: expanding community colleges and online learning; changing the corporate tax code and labor market rules to stimulate investment; adopting German-style labor market practices like apprenticeship programs, wage subsidies and programs that extend benefits to the unemployed for six months as they start small businesses.
    Reinvigorating the missing fifth—bringing them back into the labor market and using their capabilities—will certainly require money. If this were a smart country, we’ d be having a debate about how to shift money from programs that provide comfort and toward programs that spark reinvigoration.
    But, of course, that’ s not what is happening. Discretionary spending, which might be used to instigate dynamism, is declining. Health care spending, which mostly provides comfort to those beyond working years, is expanding. Attempts to take money from health care to open it up for other uses are being crushed. We’ re locking in the nation’ s wealth into the Medicare program and closing off any possibility that we might do something significant to reinvigorate the missing fifth. Next time you see a politician demagoguing Medicare, ask this: Should we be using our resources in the manner of a nation in decline or one still committed to stoking the energy of its people and continuing its rise?
It is suggested in paragraph 3 that the dropping out of prime age labor force is partly due to______.
选项 A、their lack of ambition
B、overstaffed government organizations
C、the changes in industry accommodating them
D、pessimistic economic outlook
答案C
解析 本题考查对文章第三段内容的理解。第三段主要分析了导致美国年轻人失业率高的原因。有两方面原因，一方面是内因，这部分年轻人本身学历低，不具备就业的能力；一方面是外因，美国经济结构的变化引发了有些部门结构性过剩，而这些部门正是这部分学历低的年轻人赖以生存的行业。[A]选项指出缺乏斗志，文中没有提及。[B]选项利用government设置干扰项。第三段提到有些部门，例如政府部门提供了很多的就业岗位，但是这些就业岗位只适合有大学学历的人，对文中提到的学历低的年轻人并不适合。而[B]选项中overstaffed governmentorganizations本身和失业问题就没有直接联系。[C]正确，第三段提到制造业、农业等行业的生产率提高导致这些本来能够容纳低学历者的行业的就业大门也向他们关闭。[D]选项，虽然美国眼下确实深陷经济危机，失业率居高不下也与经济危机有关，但是本文关注的结构性失业问题却并不是由经济危机直接造成的，而且作者也提到有些行业，比如说政府部门、高科技部门的就业前景还是很好的。
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