2. 财经
  3. A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. Wh

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. Wh

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问题     A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industrial unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world’s best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.
    It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid -1980s, Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith.(Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea’s LG electronics in July.)Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America’s machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.
    All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the cause of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.
    How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yield to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learned to be more quick-witted."according to Richard Ca-vanagh, executive dean of Harvard’ s Kennedy School of Government. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our business are improving their productivity."says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as"a golden age of business management in the United States."
What can be inferred from the passage?
选项 A、It is human nature to shift between self-doubt and blind pride
B、Intense competition may contribute to economic progress
C、The revival of economy depends on international cooperation
D、A long history of success may pave the way for further development
答案B
解析 推理题。本题问从文章中可推论出什么。全文可分三部分：第一部分(第一段)用实例说明战后的美国是轻而易举获得成功的；第二部分(第二、三段)美国经济衰退的原因及产生的后果；第三部分谈90年代美国经济的快速崛起。纵观全文可知，这一切均为竞争所致。故B项“强烈的竞争可有助于经济的发展”为正确答案。A项只是部分人的行为，而不是人类的天性；C项文章中没有提到合作；D项中的pave the way(铺平道路)与文章第一、二段内容不一致。
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