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  3. Higher productivity is essential to the rising of living standards and to the declining prices of goods and services. But higher

Higher productivity is essential to the rising of living standards and to the declining prices of goods and services. But higher

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问题     Higher productivity is essential to the rising of living standards and to the declining prices of goods and services. But higher productivity may lead to fewer jobs.
    Early in the postwar era, analysts were worried that automation would take over manufacturing, throwing everyone out of work. That fear went unrealized for a generation, in part because robots and computers weren’t good at much. Today, near-automated manufacturing is becoming a reality.
    Newly built factories often require only a small part of the work force in the plants. Office technology, meanwhile, now allows a few to do what once required a large group of people.
    There may come a point when the gains from higher productivity pale before the job losses, But even if that point does not come, rapid technological change is causing anxiety about future employment: anxiety that makes it hard to appreciate and enjoy what productivity creates.
    Prosperity brings many other mixed blessings. Living standards keep rising, but so do cases of depression. Agricultural yields continue rising, yet that means fewer family farms are needed Biotechnology may allow us to live longer, but may leave us dependent on costly synthetic drugs. There, are many similar examples. Increasingly, western life suffers from the paradoxes (自相矛盾) of progress. Material circumstances keep improving, yet our quality of life may be no better as a result — especially in those cases, like food, where enough becomes too much.
In the third paragraph the word "pale" most probably means______.
选项 A、result from technological changes
B、decrease in relative importance
C、result in poor health
D、increase in anxiety
答案B
解析 本题为词义猜测题。问第三段中“pale”这个词是什么意思。从上下文来看，第二段里说如今几乎全自动的生产制造正在成为现实。新建的工厂车间里只需要很少的人力。同时办公技术让几个人就能完成过去很多人才能完成的工作。紧接着第三段出现了这个句子“There may come a point when the gains from higher productivity pale before the job losses．”，意为可能会出现这样的状况，失业会使因生产力提高而获得的收益变得“pale”。而下文则论述了高科技带来的利弊。因此“pale”在上下文中的意思是“显得逊色；显得微不足道”，故选B。选项A表达的“源于科技改变”，C表达的“导致身体不好”，D表达的“增加焦虑”，都不能使句意通顺，与句子逻辑不符，故不正确。
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