Judging from business profits, we should be enjoying a powerful economic recovery. During the depression, profits dropped by abo

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问题     Judging from business profits, we should be enjoying a powerful economic recovery. During the depression, profits dropped by about 30%. But now profits grow every day. In the first quarter of this year, profits have recovered 87% of what they lost in the depression depression. When second— quarter results ate out, profits may rise above their previous peak.
    The recovery in profits should be a good sign. It makes companies more aggressive. They have a huge amount of money and ate able to do whatever they want-hire, make new investments, raise salaries. Historically, higher profits lead to higher employment. Yet, except for new companies, loss-making companies don’t create new jobs.
    So far, the contrast between recovered profits and small job growth is surprising. Last year, employment dropped 3. 3 million. Since then, the economy has recovered only 11% of those lost jobs. Companies ate doing much better than workers; that’ s a characteristic of today’ s a characteristic of today’ s economy.
    The most obvious explanation is that the relationship between labor and capital has changed. Capital has become stronger, labor has become weaker. The situation has made business managers eager to cut costs in depressions and unwilling to hire workers early in recoveries. Reducing the number of employees is the quickest way to recover profits.
    The big job cuts in this depression should not have been surprising. With the breakdown of the financial system, companies had to do everything they can to save money , because they couldn’ t rely on outside money. So they cut jobs and new investment projects. Last year, business investment dropped 26%. Nothing like that had happened since the 1940s.
    However, there ate some good signs. Many companies have started to replace their old equipment. This can create new jobs. General Electric says its research budget is up 18% and it supports new product development. But it’ s not clear whether business leaders were so scared by the crisis that they’ ve become extremely cautious. That is bad. If labor is scared and capital is overcautious, the recovery must suffer.
According to paragraph 2, in the past, increased profits led to an increase in____.

选项 A、investment
B、jobs
C、new companies
D、salaries

答案B

解析
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