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  3. Like a lot of earless New Yorkers, I am generally confused by bursts of populist outrage over high gas prices. But I have always

Like a lot of earless New Yorkers, I am generally confused by bursts of populist outrage over high gas prices. But I have always

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问题     Like a lot of earless New Yorkers, I am generally confused by bursts of populist outrage over high gas prices. But I have always assumed that the anger is genuine. But amid the recent mania over prices hitting $4 a gallon, I decided to figure out whether this fury is economically rational. So I took a look at data from the Census Bureau, which conducts a quarterly survey of American spending habits. During these last few years of historically high oil prices, Americans spent about $40 a week, or $2,000 a year, on gas. That’s around 5 percent of our overall spending. It’s less than half of what we spend on restaurants and entertainment.
    High gas prices must be forcing Americans to cut back in other ways, right? That’s what the economist Lutz Kilian at the University of Michigan wondered. He looked at personal spending habits during periods of high energy prices and discovered that " somewhat surprisingly, there is no significant decline in total expenditures on recreation," which was one place they expected to find frugality. In other words, Americans may protest loudly, but their economic behavior indicates a remarkable indifference to the price of oil.
    While sustained high gas prices would certainly produce some turmoil, so would potential spikes in countless other globally traded commodities. But there’s a reason populist outcries don’t start around soybean prices or magnesium spikes. Oil is the only volatile commodity that most Americans deal with directly: we are buffered from most other price swings by our relative wealth. Unlike people in poor countries, consumers here don’t generally buy raw commodity foods; we buy our meals processed or prepared. With most goods, the commodity price has even less impact on cost. " When people buy a phone," Kilian says, " they don’t buy the copper that makes the wiring. "
    With gas, though, hurtling prices are unavoidable. Every day, U. S. drivers pay a price determined by forces all over the world that are hard to understand and harder for the United States to control. Even if we invested in better refineries and exploited every possible energy source, from the Keystone pipeline to the Alaskan wilderness, the impact could be minimal. It could eventually lower prices at the pump—but only if nothing else affects them, like OPEC lowering its production to drive prices back up again. The price of oil is, of course, affected by hundreds of interrelated factors.
    Many analysts I’ve spoken with suggest that oil prices should fall fairly soon. This will be welcome news to the less-fortunate American families who are not impervious to the price at the pump and to anyone who claims to be pinching pennies because of gas. But as unpopular as it may sound, the best possible future for most Americans may involve much higher gas prices. As billions of people, throughout the world, enter the middle class in the coming decades, there will be an enormous increase in the demand for gas. This, along with rising environmental considerations, is likely to send the prices far higher than they are today.
In Paragraphs 1 and 2, the author is trying to illustrate that______.
选项 A、the rise in oil price doesn’t squeeze Americans as hard as they have claimed
B、the oil expenditure only accounts for a small percentage of Americans’ overall spending
C、the role played by oil price in correcting consumption habits is less than trivial
D、despite oil price rise, there is no sign that Americans will shift from cars to less fuel-consuming transportation means
答案A
解析 本文考查第一段和第二段作者主要表达的中心大意。第一段中，作者首先提到美国人总是喜欢为油价的浮动而大惊小怪，但作者关心的是，从经济学的角度看这种愤怒情绪是否合理。作者为此查阅了人口统计局发布的数据，调查结果显示，美国人每周花在汽油上的钱只占全部开支的5％。作者在第二段中继续引用密歇根大学的经济学家卢茨·基连的研究成果，研究显示油价的浮动并没有对美国人的消费习惯产生明显影响，虽然美国民众对汽油价格怨声载道，但其经济行为表明，美国人对油价高低其实无动于衷。因此作者在这两段中，主要想要阐明的问题是油价的上涨并不像美国人所声称的那样使他们的生活变得非常拮据，[A]为正确答案。[B]、[C]都是研究的结果，不能用来概括这两段作者分析的意图。[D]主要讨论的是油价对于美国人出行习惯的影响，但这两段并未就这个内容展开讨论。
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