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  3. One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage ove

One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage ove

admin2015-03-25  55
问题     One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage over their Croesus-like pay packages.【F1】Silver medals should certainly be handed out to the many executives and corporate lawyers who were complaining last week about the new Dodd-Frank bill, which includes a rule requiring companies to disclose the difference in pay between their chief executive and their lowest-level workers. It would be a "logistical nightmare," these titans of industry cried, for firms to compile this information.
    Well, maybe, but if you issue pay stubs, surely you can tally them up.【F2】The real nightmare will be when the public sees the numbers, which will illuminate just how huge the U. S. pay gap has become. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank based in Washington, the average S&P 500 CEO takes home 263 times what his cheapest laborer does. While CEO pay is indeed down from its pre-crisis highs in 2007, it’s still double what it was in the 1990s, and eight times the level in the 1950s.
    Such facts are inevitably followed by the impossible-to-answer question, do they deserve it?【F3】While the corporate world has certainly gotten more complex over the last 50 years, it’s hard to make the case that CEOs themselves have gotten any smarter, or that investors are doing a better job of judging a CEO’s success. Compensation levels are all too often driven by short-term thinking. The CEOs of the 50 firms that laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home 42 percent more pay in 2009 than their peers did—largely because cutting workers boosts short-term profits and appeals to Wall Street.
    Yet a growing body of academic research suggests that downsizing doesn’t always lead to increased profitability over the longer haul, or even lower costs.【F4】There are many reasons for this, ranging from the fact that companies going into layoff mode often lose their best workers to competitors, to the toll taken on R&D spending, which is what produces the revenue and growth potential of the future.
    While one can argue the merits of layoffs on a company-by-company basis, what’s striking is that the executives who are the most willing to ax workers also seem to be the least likely to tighten their own belts.【F5】If nothing else, it could be the starting point of a conversation in which America’s business leaders explain, to their shareholders and to the wider public, exactly why they need so much money to get the job done.
【F3】
选项
答案尽管在过去的50年里，商界已经变得越来越复杂，但是很难说明企业的首席执行官们变得更加聪明了，也很难说明投资者们在评估首席执行官的工作方面更加准确了。
解析 本句是一个复合句。句中while引导让步状语从句，译为“尽管……但是……”。而corporate最常见的意思是“公司，企业”，在这里和world搭配要意译成“商界”。后面的make thecase是一个惯用短语，意思是“提出理由，事实证明”，在这里和hard一起译为“很难说明”。最后judging a CEO’s success，关键在于对success的处理，如果直译成“评估首席执行官的成功”，就不符合汉语的表达习惯，因此应意译为“评估首席执行官的工作”。
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