首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The Redistribution of Hope "HOPE" is one of the most overused words in public life, up there with "change". Yet it matters e
The Redistribution of Hope "HOPE" is one of the most overused words in public life, up there with "change". Yet it matters e
admin
2013-10-22
27
问题
The Redistribution of Hope
"HOPE" is one of the most overused words in public life, up there with "change". Yet it matters enormously. Politicians always pay close attention to right-track/wrong-track indicators. Confidence determines whether consumers spend, and so whether companies invest. The "power of positive thinking", as Norman Vincent Peale pointed out, is enormous.
For the past 400 years the West has enjoyed a comparative advantage over the rest of the world when it comes to optimism. Western intellectuals dreamed up the ideas of enlightenment and progress, and Western men of affairs harnessed technology to impose their will on the rest of the world. The Founding Fathers of the United States, who firmly believed that the country they created would be better than any that had come before, offered citizens not just life and liberty but also the pursuit of happiness.
Desperation road
The Westerners’ growing pessimism is reshaping political life. At present, the mood in Washington is as glum as it has been since Jimmy Carter argued that America was suffering from "malaise(不安)". The Democrats’ dream that the country was on the verge of a 1960s-style liberal renaissance foundered(失败)in the mid-terms. But the Republicans are hardly hopeful: their creed leans towards anger and resentment rather than optimism.
Europe, meanwhile, has seen mass protests, some of them violent, on the streets of Athens, Dublin, London, Madrid, Paris and Rome. Tf the countries on the European Union’s periphery(边缘)are down in the dumps it is hardly surprising, but there is pessimism at its more successful core, too. The best-selling book in Germany is Thilo Sarrazin’s Germany Does Away With Itself, a jeremiad(血泪史)about the "fact" that less able women are having more children than their brighter sisters. French intellectuals will soon have Jean-Pierre Chevenement’s Is France Finished? on their shelves alongside Eric Zemmour’s French Melancholy.
The immediate explanation for this asymmetry(不对称)is the economic crisis, which has not just shaken Westerners’ confidence in the system that they built, but also widened the growth gap between mature and emerging economies. China and India are growing by 10% and 9%, compared with 3% for America and 2% for Europe. Many European countries’ unemployment rates are disgraceful even by their own dismal standards: 41% of young Spaniards are unemployed, for example. And the great American job machine has stalled: one in ten is unemployed and more than a million may have given up looking for work. But the change goes deeper than that—to the dreams that have propelled the West.
For most of its history America has kept its promise to give its citizens a good chance of living better than their parents. But these days, less than half of Americans think their children’s living standards will be better than theirs. Experience has made them gloomy: the income of the median worker has been more or less stagnant since the mid-1970s, and, thanks to a combination of failing schools and disappearing mid-level jobs, social mobility in America is now among the lowest in the rich world.
European dreams are different from American ones, but just as important to hopes of a peaceful and prosperous future. They come in two forms: an ever deeper European Union(banishing nationalism)and ever more generous welfare states(offering security). With the break-up of the Euro a possibility, and governments sinking under the burden of unaffordable entitlements as their populations age and the number of workers contracts, those happy notions are evaporating(逐渐消逝).
Shift happens
In the emerging world, meanwhile, they are not arguing about pensions, but building colleges. China’s university population has quadrupled(成四倍)in the past two decades. UNESCO(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)notes that the proportion of scientific researchers based in the developing world increased from 30% in 2002 to 38% in 2007. World-class companies such as India’s Infosys and China’s Huawei are beating developed-country competitors.
The rise of positive thinking in the emerging world is something to be welcomed—not least because it challenges the present situation. Nandan Nilekani of Infosys says that his company’s greatest achievement lies not in producing technology but in redefining the boundaries of the possible. If people in other countries take those ideas seriously, they will make life uncomfortable for the old in China and Arabia.
But there are dangers, too. Optimism can easily become irrational exuberance(兴奋): asset prices in some emerging markets have risen too high. And there is a danger of a Western backlash. Unless developing countries start taking their responsibility for global security seriously, Americans and Europeans may begin to wonder why they are policing the world to keep markets open for others to get rich.
As for the Westerners’ gloom, it has its uses. There is a growing recognition that the old rich world cannot take its prosperity for granted—that it will be overtaken by hungrier powers if it fails to deal with its structural problems. Americans are beginning to accept that their country must become less wasteful. Europeans are realizing that they need to make their economies more agile and innovative. Both are beginning to treat this crisis as the opportunity that it is.
Nor should Westerners overdo the despair, for the emergence of new great powers will benefit them, too. True, their governments will find it harder to boss the rest of the world around; their most desirable properties will increasingly be owned by foreigners; their children will have to work harder to get good jobs in an increasingly globalized economy. But the rising number of Indians, Chinese and Brazilians who can afford to buy their products and services will help their companies prosper. The countries that have provided them with workers will increasingly provide them with customers, too.
It may not feel like it in the West, but this is, in many ways, the best of times. Hundreds of millions are climbing out of poverty. The Internet gives ordinary people access to information that even the most privileged scholar could not have dreamed of a few years ago. Medical advances are conquering diseases and extending life spans. For most of human history, only a privileged few have reasonably been able to hope that the future would be better than the present. Today the masses everywhere can; and that is surely the reason to be optimistic.
The fact that more people from emerging countries buy things from the West may lead to the______of western companies.
选项
答案
prosperity
解析
同义转述题。题干中的more people from emerging countries是对原文中the rising number of Indians,Chinese andBrazilians的同义转述。根据语法知识可知,空格处应填入名词作宾语,因此需把原文中的动词prosper转换为名词形式prosperity。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/WIS7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
WhyisAprilthecruelestmonthforAmericanhighschoolseniors?Whatdoes"gilt-edgeddiploma"meaninthesecondparagraph?
Sixteenyearsago,EileenDoyle’shusband,anengineer,tookhisfourchildrenupforanearlymorningcupoftea,packedasmal
A、Degreesineconomics.B、Addedeffort.C、Medicalschools.D、Lawschools.A综合推断题。短文中提到,经济学学位非常受欢迎,因为它能让毕业生获得高薪且不需像医学院或法学院的学生那样付出
A、ThehistoryofBenjaminFranklin.B、ThehistoryoftheU.S.mail.C、Thechangesofwritingletters.D、ThehistoryofU.S.BWha
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessayentitledAbilityorDiploma.Youshouldwriteatleast120word
A、15minutes.B、20minutes.C、10minutesD、25minutes.AW:Atwhattimewillthegamestart?M:At8o’clock,andnowmywatchs
A、Eatinginacafeteria.B、Buyingsomethinginastore.C、Talkingonthetelephone.D、Gettingmoneyatabank.C
WhenRobertoFelizcametotheUSAfromtheDominicanRepublic,heknewonlyafewwordsofEnglish.Educationsoonbecamea【S1】
WhenRobertoFelizcametotheUSAfromtheDominicanRepublic,heknewonlyafewwordsofEnglish.Educationsoonbecamea【S1】
A、Shedidn’tunderstandwhatJanewassaying.B、Janeshouldhavebeenmoreactive.C、Janeneedstraininginpublicspeakingless
随机试题
A.强化扫描示胰腺低密度肿块,远侧胰管扩张B.强化扫描示胰腺略高密度肿块,胰管扩张C.胰腺萎缩,胰管呈串珠样扩张,可见点状钙化D.胰头不均质强化病灶,可见点状钙化E.胰腺弥漫性肿大,边缘模糊急性水肿型胰腺炎可表现为
下述描述符合细菌性角膜炎特点的是
必须凭处方才能在零售药店销售的药品有
下列哪些行为情节严重的构成非法经营罪?
简述资产的特征:
学校教育心理学的研究序列是学与教而不是教与学。()
根据埃里克森的人格发展理论,中学阶段的主要任务是培养学生的()
设an=∫0nπ|Sinx|dx,求
关于华为交换机密码配置,正确的说法是_____________。①华为交换机的缺省用户名是admin,无密码②通过BootROM可以重置Console口密码③telnet登录密码丢失,通过Console口登录交换机后重新进行配置④通过Console
ElleWoodshasitall.She’sthepresidentofhersorority,aHawaiianTropicgirl,MissJuneinhercampuscalendar,and,above
最新回复
(
0
)