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
It’s official: there are now more poor people in America than at any other time in the 52 years records have been kept. We knew
It’s official: there are now more poor people in America than at any other time in the 52 years records have been kept. We knew
admin
2014-09-09
70
问题
It’s official: there are now more poor people in America than at any other time in the 52 years records have been kept. We knew that the 2010 poverty numbers, released by the Census Bureau on Sept. 13, weren’t going to be good. They turned out to be, in the words of Brookings senior fellow Ron Haskins, "extraordinarily bad. " More than 15% of Americans live below the poverty line. The total rose for the fourth consecutive year. For a family of four, poverty means scraping by on roughly $22,000 a year.
The new poverty crisis has emerged in part out of the other economic crisis we are facing: unemployment. The fastest way to poverty is job loss, and 6. 5 million jobs were lost in the recession. Today, a full two years into the "recovery," more than 9% of Americans are stil out of work. But a fact that may be buried in the copious coverage of these new figures is that the poverty problem didn’ t start with the financial crisis and the subsequent downturn. Its roots go much deeper, possibly to the recession of 2,000, after which poverty levels didn’t drop back to their prerecession numbers as they typically do after a recovery.
Though it’s difficult to tease out statistically, that turning point is undoubtedly a legacy of the previous two decades of hyperglobalization, when millions of middle-income jobs were lost to outsourcing or replaced by technology and salaries became more and more compressed. The average earnings of a blue collar worker are lower today than in 1964.
But the poverty problem is also about the fracturing of the American Dream, specifically the dream of upward mobility. It’ s become increasingly hard for Americans to rise above the socioeconomic status of their birth, particularly compared with their peers in other rich nations. "Poverty is in many ways about a lack of social mobility," says Erin Currier from the Pew Charitable Trusts. And research shows that even before the current crisis, Americans had much less mobility than people in many European nations. "We have a belief system and an idea about ourselves that don’t always align well with the facts," notes Isabel Sawhill, a co-director, with Haskins, of the Center on Children and Families at Brookings.
Now, in a world of high unemployment, lower wages and growing poverty, the fiction is becoming ever more difficult to sustain. This downturn marks the first period in 20 years in which employment as a percentage of population in the U. S. has fallen below the rate in countries like the U. K. , Germany and the Netherlands. Indeed, downward mobility is so much a part of youth culture today that the Census Bureau has come up with a whole new lexicon for it, including the term doubling up, which describes households in which adult children who can’t afford life on their own return to live with their parents. An additional 3 million of them would be below the poverty line if they couldn’t crash with Mom and Dad.
That’s unlikely to change sooa Most U. S. job growth since the 1990s has been in sectors like education and government, which are facing big cuts. Meanwhile, 9 out of 10 of the biggest occupations in America offer less than the mean hourly wage.(Think salesclerks and home health aides.)Indeed, the Boomerang Generation is likely to become as demographically defining in the next few decades as the baby boomers have been. The two groups may very well end up in a political war for dwindling government benefits, as the elderly fight to keep entitlements like Social Security that ward off poverty and younger people push for spending on education and retraining to avoid falling into it.
While there’s no doubt that investment in education, which creates jobs and improves worker competitiveness, is a long-run solution, the key short-term weapon in the fight against poverty is tax policy. Poverty numbers would be far higher without tax breaks for the poor. The Obama Administration should keep fighting to extend initiatives like the earned-income tax credit, the largest and most effective antipoverty program.(Ronald Reagan used it to take millions out of poverty.)President Obama should also continue the pressure on the richest Americans to carry a larger share of the load. Despite congressional resistance, many wealthy people see it’s in their interest to foster a less divisive society. While Americans historically haven’t been as inclined as Europeans to riot over inequity(witness the protests that have taken place from London to Athens), it’s hard to rule that out in a world in which the American Dream is increasingly becoming a myth.
The expression "to tease out" in the clause "Though it’s difficult to tease out statistically"(para. 3)can be paraphrased as______.
选项
A、to make light jokes
B、to conduct a thorough study
C、to give a clear account
D、to provide evidence
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/yUSO777K
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
BertrandRussell—TheAnalysisofMind(TruthandFalsehood)Onthefeatureswhichdistinguishknowledgefromaccuracyofres
MostpeoplewouldbeimpressedbythehighqualityofmedicineavailabletomostAmericans.Thereisalotofspecialization,a
Since2008,therehavebeenmoreandmorefamouspeopleintheactingprofessionwhosenamebecomes"smelly",andwhoselifeand
Ofalltheareasoflearningthemostimportantisthedevelopmentofattitudes.Emotionalreactionsaswellaslogicalthought
Fornearlyacentury,twoUnitedStatesgovernmentalagencies,theUnitedStatesArmyCorpsofEngineersandtheBureauofRecla
Socialcontrolreferstosocialprocesses,plannedorunplanned,bywhichpeoplearetaught,persuaded,orforcedtoconformto
Thebest________ofpeople’sabilitytodealwellwithstressandanxietyistheirsocialconnection.
Still,itwasnaturaltobeupsetwhensomeoneyouknowhasbeenbrutallymurdered.
A、UsualSpeciesoffish.B、Characteristicsofauniqueseaanimal.C、Theharvestoffisheggs.D、Unusualspeciesofhorses.B本题考
A、None.B、One.C、Two.D、Three.C
随机试题
恶心呕吐、呃逆嗳气等症频作,其病机是
外感咳嗽属于
在血清蛋白质中主要来自浆细胞的是
有一批货物,已投保平安险,分两只船装运,一起运往目的港。由于航运过程中遇暴风雨的袭击,甲轮因船身颠簸,致使船上货物相互碰撞发生部分损失,而乙轮则不慎与另一货轮发生碰撞,为了船货的安全,船长被迫抛弃大部分船上货物,从而发生部分损失。保险公司应如何予以赔偿?(
某市有多家家电企业,其中甲公司、乙公司和丙公司的产品在该地的市场占有率达80%,三家公司的控股股东均为丁公司,为占有更大市场份额,三家公司决定合并,下列说法正确的是:
审计人员在根据样本结果推断总体以形成审计结论时,具体的程序和内容包括()。
甲受某国企委托,负责查验出场单、验货放行。甲与无业人员乙串通,趁甲一人值班时,由乙开车从货场拉出价值10万元的货物,并销赃平分。在本案中()。
某公司年会设有6个红包,分别装有100、200、300、400、500、600元现金,若从中任意抽取3个红包且红包内总金额能被三等分,则三个红包归抽中的人所有。那么中奖概率为多少?
刘老师带了41名同学去北海公园划船,共租了10条船。每条大船坐6人,每条小船坐4人,问大船、小船各租几条( )。
WhatistheauthortryingtoprovewiththequotationofWinstonChurchill?Whatdoestheword"unparalleled"(Para.2Line4)
最新回复
(
0
)