高三英语阅读培优训练3

高三英语阅读培优训练

经济的问题并非工资上涨——而是工资上涨不足

【原文】

I ①In recent weeks media outlets in the US have been fretting over what would ordinarily be considered good news - the roaring American economy, which has brought low unemployment and, in some places, a labour shortage. ②Owners and managers have complained about their problems in finding people to fill low-wage positions. ③“Nobody wants to do manual labour any more,” as one trade association grande e said, and so the manual labour simply goes undone.

II ①Company bosses talk about the things they have done to fix the situation: the ads they’ve published; the guest-worker visas for which they’ve applied; how they are going into schools to encourage ki ds to learn construction skills or to drive trucks. ②But nothing seems to work. ③Blame for the labour shortage is sprayed all over the US map: opioids are said to be the problem. ④And welfare, and inadequate parking spaces, and a falling birthrate, and mass incarceration, and–above all - the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

⑤But no one really knows for sure.

III ①The textbook solution to the labour shortage problem - paying workers more - rarely merits more than a line or two, if it’s mentioned at all. ②So unwilling are business leaders to talk about or consider this obvious answer that Neel Kashkari, the president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, scolded them last year: “If you’re not raising wages, then it just sounds like whining.”

I V ①If you study the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ numbers on wages for nonsupervisory workers over the past few decades, you will notice that wage growth has been strangely slow to pick up. ②Hot economies usually drive wages up pretty promptly; this recovery has been running since 2009 and it has barely moved the needle.

V ①How could such a thing happen in this modern and enlightened age? ②Well, for starters, think of all that whining we’re hearing from the US’s management, who will apparently blame anyone a nd do anything to avoid paying workers more. ③Every labour-management innovation seems to have been designed with this amazing goal in mind. ④Every great bipartisan political initiative, from free trade to welfare reform, points the same way.

VI ①According to Josh Bivens, of Washington’s Economic Policy Institute, you can trace the slow decline of US workers’ bargaining power in the historical statistics. ②As the years go by, it requires ever lower levels of unemployment to ignite the wage growth that was once the hallmark of good times. ③“The decades-long campaign by employers to kick away any sources of economic leverage enjoyed by typical workers seems to have worked,” he says. ④“These workers now get real wage increases only during white-hot labour mar kets.”

VII ①This is the central story of the last four decades, the vast social engineering project to which all our recent presidents and both parties have contributed. ②But there’s a bright side: if the US economy continues to roar as it has been doing, there is no question that wages will eventually go up.

【词汇短语】

1. media outlet媒体机构

2. fret over为…烦恼

3. roaring /'rɔːrɪŋ/ adj. 兴胜的

4. manual labour体力劳动

5. grandee /græn'diː/ n. 要人，显贵

6. undone /ʌn'dʌn/ adj. 未完成的

7. guest worker 外籍劳工

8. spray /spreɪ/ v. 散发，散布

9. *opioid /'əʊpɪɒɪd/ n. 类鸦片

10. mass incarceration大规模监禁

11. merit /'merɪt/ v. 值得，应受

12. scold /skəʊld/ v. 责骂，叱责

13. whine /waɪn/ v. 发牢骚，哭诉

14. nonsupervisory /nɒn'sju:pə'vaɪzərɪ/ adj. 非监管的

15. pick up 增加

16. promptly /'prɒm(p)tlɪ/ adv. 迅速地