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
95
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.
Which of the following can serve as the conclusion of the passage?
选项
A、Inequality isn’t just a social issue—it’s putting the future of the US economy in peril.
B、Inequality must be eliminated throughout the country to bridge the wealth gap.
C、Raising the minimum wage will lead to the settlement of social inequality issue.
D、Only through creating more middle-class jobs can the inequality problem be solved.
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/sDSO777K
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
AsanEnglishmajorstudentatoneofthemostfamousuniversitiesinChina,IstronglybelievethatbusinessEnglishismorepr
Itwouldbewiseifyouhadnotbreathedasinglewordofthematter.
Thatuniversityhasproducedalargenumberofsocialcelebrities,includingfourPresidentsandthreeSpeakers.
Itisunderstandablethatthoughadolescentmaturationalanddevelopmentalstatesoccurinanorderlysequence,theirtiming____
OfalltheemployedworkersintheUnitedStates,12.5millionarepartofatemporaryworkforce.TheUnitedStatesBureauofLa
Someastronomerscontendthattheuniversemaybeyoungerthanpreviouslythought.
Insize,Canadaisthesecondlargestcountryonearth.Intermsof【C1】______,itisamemberofBigSeven,theworld’sleading
A、Aboutsixty.B、Aboutfifteen.C、Aboutsixteen.D、Aboutfive.A
Theterms"resume"and"curriculumvitae"(CV)generallymean【C1】______:aoneortwo-pagedocumentdescribingone’s【C2】______and
A、Readingnewspapers.B、Readingjournals.C、Writingarticlesonthesports.D、Watchingthesportsgames.A
随机试题
CT中窄窗的含义是
患者,男性,25岁,突发剧烈头痛,伴频繁呕吐,继之神志不清。检查:体温36.8℃,颈抵抗,心肺无异常,肢体无偏瘫,应考虑为
依据《劳动防护用品监督管理规定》的规定,劳动防护用品生产企业必须具备的条件包括()。
重大的国家统计调查项目应当()。
期货从业人员对在执业过程中所获得的未公开的重要信息应当履行保密义务,不得泄露、传递给他人,但下列()情况除外。
房地产开发企业与房地产经纪机构签订委托代理租售合同以后,需要向房地产经纪机构提供的资料有()。[2008年真题]
把大班上课、小班讨论、个人独立研究结合在一起,并采用灵活的时间单位代替固定划一的上课时间,以大约20分钟为一个课时。这种出现于美国20世纪50年代的教学组织形式是()。
市政府诚邀1000名市民参加年终市民代表大会,你是市政府工作人员,领导将此任务交给你负责,你如何组织?
有甲、乙、丙、丁四人,如果甲炒股,那么乙、丙、丁也都炒股。如果上述断定为真,那么以下哪项一定也为真?
在Excel2003中,如果按照日期型字段的升序进行排序,年龄大的记录肯定排在数据清单的后面。
最新回复
(
0
)