英语阅读——六级阅读（一）

 

2011年12月六级

    What's the one word of advice a well-meaning professional would give to a recent college graduate? China？India! Brazil! How about trade!
     When the Commerce Department（美国商务部） reported last week that the trade deficit（贸易逆差） in June approached  50 billion, it set off a new round of economic doomsaying. Imports, which soared to $200.3 billion in the month, are subtracted （扣除、减掉）in the calculation of gross domestic product（GDP）. The larger the trade deficit, the smaller the GDP. Should such imbalances continue, pessimists(悲观主义者) say, they could contribute to slower growth?
    But there's another way of looking at the trade data. Over the past two years, the figures on imports and exports seem not to signal a double-dip recession – a renewed decline in the broad level of economic activity in the United States – but an economic expansion.
    The rising volume of trade – more goods and services shuttling in and out of the United States – is good news for many sectors. Companies engaged in shipping, trucking, rail freight, delivery, and logistics (物流) have all been reporting better than expected results. The rising numbers signify growing vitality（活力） in foreign markets – when we import more stuff, it puts more cash in the hands of people around the world, and U.S. exports are rising because more foreigners have the ability to buy the things we produce and market. The rising tide of trade is also good news for people who work in trade-sensitive businesses, especially those that produce commodities（商品、货物） for which global demand sets the price – agricultural goods, mining, metals, oil.
    And while exports always seem to lag, U.S. companies are becoming more involved in the global economy with each passing month. General Motors （通用汽车）sells as many cars in China as in America each month. While that may not do much for imports, it does help GM's balance sheet – and hence makes the jobs of U.S.-based executives more stable.
    One great challenge for the U.S. economy is slack（松弛的、疲惫的） domestic（国内的） consumer demand. Americans are paying down debt, saving more, and spending more carefully. That's to be expected, given what we've been through. But there's a bigger challenge. Can U.S.-based businesses, large and small, figure out how to get a piece of growing global demand? Unless you want to pick up and move to India, or Brazil, or China, the best way to do that is through trade. It may seem obvious, but it's no longer enough simply to do business with our friends and neighbors here at home.
    Companies and individuals who don't have a strategy to export more, or to get more involved in foreign markets, or to play a role in global trade, are shutting themselves out of the lion's share（最大的份额） of economic opportunity in our world.

没有更多出口战略、没有更多参与外国市场、没有在全球贸易中发挥作用的公司和个人，正在把自己关在世界经济机会的最大份额之外。

 

2011年6月六级

    At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly （压倒性地；不可抵抗地）thinks they're bad. Yet the consensus among most economists is that immigration, both legal and illegal, provides a small net boost to the economy. Immigrants provide cheap labor, lower the prices of everything from farm produce to new homes, and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets. So why is there such a discrepancy between the perception of immigrants' impact on the economy and the reality?那么，为什么在移民对经济影响的认知和现实之间会有如此大的差异呢?
    There are a number of familiar(熟悉的、常见的) theories. Some argue that people are anxious and feel threatened by an inflow of new workers. Others highlight the strain that undocumented immigrants place on public services, like schools, hospitals, and jails. Still others emphasize the role of race, arguing that foreigners add to the nation's fears and insecurities. There's some truth to all these explanations, but they aren't quite sufficient.
    To get a better understanding of what's going on; consider the way immigration's impact is felt. Though its overall effect may be positive, its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly. David Card, an economist at UC Berkeley, notes that the ones who profit most directly from immigrants' low-cost labor are businesses and employers – meatpacking plants in Nebraska, for instance, or agricultural businesses in California. Granted, these producers' savings probably translate into lower prices at the grocery store, but how many consumers make that mental connection at the checkout counter? As for the drawbacks of illegal immigration, these, too, are concentrated. Native low-skilled workers suffer most from the competition of foreign labor. According to a study by George Boras, a Harvard economist, immigration reduced the wages(工资) of American high-school dropouts by 9% between 1980-2000.
    Among high-skilled, better-educated employees, however, opposition was strongest in states with both high numbers of immigrants and relatively generous social services. What worried them most, in other words, was the fiscal (财政的)burden of immigration. That conclusion was reinforced（强化，支持） by another finding: that their opposition appeared to soften（软化） when that fiscal burden decreased, as occurred with welfare reform in the 1990s, which curbed immigrants' access to certain benefits.
    The irony（讽刺意味） is that for all the overexcited debate, the net effect of immigration is minimal. Even for those most acutely affected – say, low-skilled workers, or California residents – the impact isn't all that dramatic. "The unpleasant voices have tended to dominate our perceptions（认知）," says Daniel Michener, a political science professor at the University of Oregon. "But when all those factors are put together and the economists calculate the numbers, it ends up being a net positive, but a small one." Too bad most people don't realize it.

 

2010年12月六级

      In the early 20th century, few things were more appealing than the promise of scientific knowledge. In a world struggling with rapid industrialization, science and technology seemed to offer solutions to almost every problem. Newly created state colleges and universities devoted themselves almost entirely to scientific, technological, and engineering fields. Many Americans came to believe that scientific certainty could not only solve scientific problems, but also reform politics, government, and business. Two world wars and a Great Depression rocked（动摇） the confidence of many people that scientific expertise alone could create a prosperous and ordered world. After World War Ⅱ, the academic world turned with new enthusiasm to humanistic studies, which seemed to many scholars the best way to ensure the survival of democracy. American scholars fanned out across much of the world—with support from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright program, etc.—to promote the teaching of literature and the arts in an effort to make the case for democratic freedoms.
　　In the America of our own time, the great educational challenge has become an effort to strengthen the teaching of what is now known as the STEM disciplines（学科） (science, technology, engineering, and math). There is considerable and justified concern that the United States is falling behind much of the rest of the developed world in these essential disciplines. India, China, Japan, and other regions seem to be seizing technological leadership.（抢占技术领先地位）
　　At the same time, perhaps inevitably（不可避免地）, the humanities—while still popular in elite colleges and universities—have experienced a significant decline. Humanistic disciplines are seriously underfunded, not just by the government and the foundations but by academic institutions themselves. Humanists are usually among the lowest-paid faculty members at most institutions and are often lightly regarded because they do not generate grant income and because they provide no obvious credentials (资质) for most nonacademic careers.
　　Undoubtedly American education should train more scientists and engineers. Much of the concern among politicians about the state of American universities today is focused on the absence of “real world” education—which means preparation for professional and scientific careers. But the idea that institutions or their students must decide between humanities and science is false. Our society could not survive without scientific and technological knowledge. But we would be equally impoverished (贫困的) without humanistic knowledge as well. Science and technology teach us what we can do. Humanistic thinking helps us understand what we should do.
　　It is almost impossible to imagine our society without thinking of the extraordinary achievements of scientists and engineers in building our complicated world. But try to imagine our world as well without the remarkable works that have defined our culture and values. We have always needed, and we still need, both.