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  3. All men are created equal, or so reckoned Thomas Jefferson as he drafted America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776. Subseque

All men are created equal, or so reckoned Thomas Jefferson as he drafted America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776. Subseque

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问题     All men are created equal, or so reckoned Thomas Jefferson as he drafted America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776. Subsequent Americans have had reason to question the founding father. So too have people in the land from which the new nation gained its freedom. America and Britain are among the most unequal countries in the rich world and Britain, at any rate, is more unequal now than it was a generation ago. That is the conclusion of a study commissioned by Harriet Harman, the equalities minister.
    Class and money have always strongly affected how people do in life in Britain, with well-heeled families breeding affluent children just as the offspring of the desperately poor tend to remain poor. All that was supposed to have ceased at the end of the Second World War, with the birth of a welfare state designed to meet basic needs and promote social mobility. But despite devoting much thought and more money to improving the lot of the poor, governments have failed to boost those at the bottom of the pile as much as those at the top have boosted themselves.
    The new study, led by John Hills of the London School of Economics, found, for example, that the richest tenth of households received income more than four times that of the poorest tenth; just a generation ago, it was three times as much. Internationally, only six of the 30 members of the OECD, a club of mainly rich countries, show greater inequality. Wealth is distributed far more unequally than income, with the richest tenth in Britain holding assets worth almost 100 times those of the poorest.
    Although the study found that some of the widest gaps between social groups have diminished over time, deep-seated differences between haves and have-nots persist, ruining the life chances of the less fortunate. Politicians of all stripes talk up equality of opportunity, arguing that it makes for a fairer and more mobile society, and a more prosperous one. The goal of greater equality of outcomes also has its boosters. In "The Spirit Level", epidemic disease experts Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson claim that more equal societies are healthier than unequal ones, as well as happier. Not all agree, but in a country where the National Health Service accounts for almost a fifth of public spending, it is worth considering.
    The difficulty arises in putting these notions into practice, through severe tax increases for the middle-class and wealthy, or expanding government intervention. These have not recently been vote-winning propositions, but the recession that Britain is now limping away from may have changed things.
    So Gordon Brown, at any rate, must be hoping. Recently the prime minister said he would put social mobility at the heart of his campaign for re-election. The trouble is that he has had 13 years to work on it already. Despite his pledge to invest in education to "make a reality of genuine equality of opportunity for all", opinion polls suggest that his prospects are poor.
    A. concluded that Britain became more unequal than they had been a generation ago.
    B. stated that people in an equal society were healthier and happier than those in less equal one.
    C. claimed that severe tax increases for the middle-class and wealthy was an effective way to make an equal society.
    D. wrote the principle of equality into the Declaration of Independence.
    E. suggested a majority of countries in the OECD showed greater inequality between the rich and the poor.
    F. found that the income gap between the richest tenth and the poorest tenth has become larger.
    G. promised that genuine equality of opportunity for all would come true.
John Hills
选项
答案F
解析 John Hills出现在第三段。第三段提到由John Hills主持的一项研究，该研究表明10％最富有的人的收入现在是10％最贫穷的人的四倍，而之前只是三倍。由此可推断，他们之间的收入差距扩大了，故确定F为答案。E项的部分内容也在第三段涉及。第三段第二句提到，OECD的30个成员国中，只有六个国家贫富差距悬殊。这与E项表述的a majority of countries…showed greater inequality(绝大多数的国家……贫富差距悬殊)不符，可见E项是错误的表述，故不选。
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