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  3. It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality o

It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality o

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问题     It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality of their infrastructure. When my British mother spent several months in the US in the 1950s, it was dazzlingly futuristic. There was air conditioning, an icebox in every fridge, ubiquitous neon lights and an open road on which even the working class could afford to drive. But bit by bit over the past 30 years, the world’s first truly modern infrastructure has shown its age. It has been starved by a generation of under-investment. And Americans have adapted around it.
    At some point in the next 12 months, we will discover whether the US has the will to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century. If all goes well, Congress will take steps to avert a fiscal cliff before January 1. As part of that deal lawmakers will schedule another ticking time bomb for late 2013, before which they will have to strike a larger bargain or hit another fiscal cliff. The likelihood is that Congress will shrink the already meagre federal investment budget. The hope, as the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Center puts it, is that Congress will "cut to invest" rather than doing so crudely across the board.
    There are three reasons to worry. First, there is remarkably little public outrage over the dilapidation in the power grid, public roads, domestic airports and waterways. This means that lawmakers will be feeling stronger pressures in other directions(such as defending the existing low level of capital gains tax, for example, or maintaining job-creating defence budgets). It is hard to fly domestically in the US and not at regular intervals face heavy delays, cancellations or being bumped off your flight. It is also hard not to miss the impressively stoical reaction of most passengers.
    Second, most Americans are unaware of how far behind the rest of the world their country has fallen. According to the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness report, US infrastructure ranks below 20th in most of the nine categories, and below 30 for quality of air transport and electricity supply. The US gave birth to the internet the kind of decentralised network that the US power grid desperately needs, yet according to the OECD club of mostly rich nations, average US internet speeds are barely a 10th of those in countries such as South Korea and Germany. In an age where the global IT superhighway is no longer a slogan, this is no joke. The budding US entrepreneur can survive gridlocked traffic, but a slow internet can be crippling.
    Third, it may be asking too much of Washington in its present state of polarisation to give the green light to an ambitious infrastructure plan. In a departure from their party’s traditions, many Republicans are now ideologically opposed to any serious federal role in infrastructure and want to decentralise it to the states. It is thus also a stretch to imagine Congress setting up a public infrastructure bank, as President Barack Obama has requested. The bank would use $ 10bn in seed money to leverage a multiple of that in private money for cross-state projects much like the European Investment Bank. The chances are it will stay on the drawing board.
The US infrastructure falls behind many countries of the world because______.
选项 A、the US has a larger and larger population in recent years
B、the US has experienced frequent natural disasters and political turmoil
C、its current infrastructure has already existed over 50 years
D、the quality of its old infrastructure is low
答案C
解析 本题考查考生对于文章所述核心原因的理解。其实在第一段最后一句，作者对于美国基础设施落后于他国的原因就作了很好的概括：在过去三十年里，世界上第一批真正意义上的现代基础设施一天天老化。经历了二十余年的投资不足之后，这些基础设施已破败不堪，而美国人也已适应了这种现实。概括起来就是两点：第一，年头久了，老化了；第二，用于更新的投资不足。对照看选项，只有C正确，是第一点原因，也是最直接的原因。出题人没有提及投资不足这个原因，实际上是给本题降低了难度．可以毫不犹豫的选择C。ABD是出题人故意设置的迷惑选项，文中根本没有提及，而且根据常识，也都是不正确的陈述，均不正确。
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