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
Economic growth is up. Unemployment is down. The housing market is in recovery. So why didn’t President Obama’s State of the Uni
Economic growth is up. Unemployment is down. The housing market is in recovery. So why didn’t President Obama’s State of the Uni
admin
2015-01-10
53
问题
Economic growth is up. Unemployment is down. The housing market is in recovery. So why didn’t President Obama’s State of the Union speech strike a more economically triumphant tone? In a word, inequality. It’s bad, and it’s going to get worse. The forces of globalization and technology tend to wipe out middle-income jobs and favor those at the very top of the socioeconomic ladder. A new McKinsey Global Institute study found that 230 million white collar jobs, representing some $ 9 trillion in income, will be transformed or even eliminated by computers in the next decade. As Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, put it recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, "We’ re in a race between computers and people—and we need to make sure the people win. "
Inequality matters for lots of reasons: It makes countries less economically and financially stable, it dampens growth by keeping wages and spending low, and it reduces social mobility. It also just makes us feel bad Behavioral economics tells us that our sense of well-being isn’t absolute but rather is pegged to how the Joneses are doing. That’ s why it’ s no surprise that a new Pew study found that fewer and fewer Americans identify themselves as middle class. Yes, we have a recovery, but it’s a bifurcated one. There are jobs for Ph. D. s and burger flippers but not much in between. The rich are indeed getting richer: the top 1% took 95% of all new wealth created in the U. S. from 2009 to 2012. Six of the top 10 fastest-growing job categories are $ 15-an-hour service gigs. And median income has fallen not since the crisis and recovery but since 1999—that was the last time the American family got a raise.
While the President talked a lot about the middle class, he used the word inequality only three times in his hour-plus address(as opposed to 26 times in a similar talk last December; his message people had clearly decided it was too negative). But it was the subtext of the speech, which was almost entirely devoted to policy ideas designed to bridge the wealth gap. Their efficacy, assuming he can see them through, will vary. Yes, raising the minimum wage is a good idea, but mainly at the margins; it increases spending power and seems fair, but it doesn’t create the sort of middle-class jobs we need. Sure, free trade helps U. S. exports, but again, it doesn’t necessarily create more jobs. Indeed, as Nobel laureate Michael Spence has shown, net job creation in areas of the American economy most open to trade has been basically nil since the 1980s. Immigration could bring in more skilled labor. But that’s also a marginal change, not a structural shift in our economy.
The most economically promising part of the President’s speech centered on education, in particular transforming secondary education by bolstering science, math and technology skills and linking educators with job creators. In last year’s SOTU, the President pushed ideas like the six-year high school model, which allows companies such as IBM, Microsoft and others to help design the curriculum that kids need in order to become employable. Students also graduate not just with a high school diploma but also an associate’s degree. This year, it’s clear Obama wants to take that idea national, which makes sense in a world in which the majority of the 14 million jobs created in the next decade will require at least two years of college, if not more.
Getting businesses to play a greater role in what have traditionally been public-sector arenas like education is absolutely essential. But education is a long-term proposition. As Warren Buffett once told me, "We can’t educate ourselves out" of the inequality problem in the short term; that’s why we’ re going to need some wealth redistribution in order to buffer the next few years of job destruction and evolution. While the President called for the closing of some corporate loopholes, we need to have a serious conversation about raising the capital gains tax, ending deductions that favor debt over equity and disproportionately reward the rich, and increasing incentives for firms that put more money into R&D and less into share buybacks or overseas bank accounts.
I also wish the President had talked more about long-term entitlement reform. The truth is that businesses in the U. S. are investing, but only in short-term assets(meaning those that mature over 15 years or less). After that, corporate investment drops off a cliff, which many experts take as proof that business doesn’t believe in the country’s ability to come up with a realistic budget and growth plan after that point. It’s a telling metric—and one Obama only scratched the surface of in his SOTU speech.
The sentence "how the Joneses are doing"(para. 2)can best be paraphrased as______.
选项
A、how our neighbors and associates are working
B、how others are living and feeling
C、how our neighbors are treating us
D、how others are competing with us
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/bDSO777K
本试题收录于:
NAETI高级口译笔试题库外语翻译证书(NAETI)分类
0
NAETI高级口译笔试
外语翻译证书(NAETI)
相关试题推荐
Hiswrongjudgementofthesituationofthewaracceleratedthedestructionofthecountry.
Itwouldbewiseifyouhadnotbreathedasinglewordofthematter.
Theengineersaregoingthroughwiththeirhighwayproject,inspitethattheexpenseshaverisen.
VisitorstoBritainmayfindthebestplacetosamplelocalcultureisinatraditionalpub.Butthesefriendlyhostelriescanb
ThehappiestpeopleintheworldmayliveinScandinavia,anewstudysuggests.That’saccordingtotheUnitedNationsGeneralA
OfalltheemployedworkersintheUnitedStates,12.5millionarepartofatemporaryworkforce.TheUnitedStatesBureauofLa
Thiswasbutanadditionaltestimonyofthesuperiorityofthesocialisteconomicsystemoverthecapitalisteconomicsystem.
Thephrasehasalwaysbeenusedalittlepejorativelyandevenfacetiouslybythelowerclasses.
Seekingtoframehisnewadministrationasonewithafirmfocusonclosingthegapbetweenchildrenfromaffluentandpoorfami
Allovertheworldmenandwomenandboysandgirlsenjoysports.Sportshelppeopletolivehappilyaswellaskeepfit.Today
随机试题
互购贸易作为一种对销贸易,下列符合其特点的是()
某男童,9岁,近期家长发现皮肤没有光泽,毛发枯黄,脸上生癣,吃饭不好,生长发育缓慢,免疫功能下降,易生病。该症状提示男童可能缺()
下列关于造成猪肉涨价原因的描述,错误的是()。
单用户操作系统是只为某一个人使用计算机提供服务的程序。()
甲有一套商品房欲出售,经人介绍,与乙签订房屋买卖合同,丙知道后找到甲,表示愿意以更高的价格购买,甲便与丙订立合同并办理房屋过户手续。下列说法正确的是()。
阅读关于“外力作用和地表形态”的图文资料,按要求完成教学设计任务。材料一《普通高中地理课程标准(实验)》中的内容标准要求:“结合实例,分析造成地表形态变化的内外力因素。”材料二某版本教科书中关于“外力作用和地表形态”的相关内容。要求
行政相对人只能对损益性行政行为申请法律救济,而对授益性行政行为则不能申请救济。()
关于对国家机关公务员进行处分的说法,下列哪一选项是正确的?()
历史的车轮滚滚向前,我们依然________理性、良知、责任。我们认为冷静的力量,同样能让人________。冷静,代表着不被表面的喧嚣干扰,不为外界的繁华________,不被情绪裹挟,不受利益诱惑。填入划横线部分最恰当的一项是:
Theunhealthyingredientsandlownutritioncontentofthefoodcanmakeyoulessactiveandlazy,newresearchshows.Nosurpri
最新回复
(
0
)