题目内容
Much of the holiday spending is on gifts for others. At the simplest level, giving gifts involves the giver thinking of something that the recipient would like—he tries to guess her preferences, as economists say—and then buying the gift and delivering it. Yet this guessing of preferences is no mean feat; indeed, it is often done badly. Every year, ties go unworn and books unread. And even if a gift is enjoyed, it may not be what the recipient would have bought had they spent the money themselves. Intrigued by this mismatch between wants and gifts, in 1993 Joel Waldfogel, then an economist at Yale University, sought to estimate the disparity in dollar terms. In a paper that has proved seminal in the literature on the issue, he asked students two questions at the end of a holiday season: first, estimate the total amount paid (by the givers) for all the holiday gifts you received; second, apart from the sentimental value of the items, if you did not have them, how much would you be willing to pay to get them？ His results were gloomy: on average, a gift was valued by the recipient well below the price paid by the giver. The most conservative estimate put the average receiver's valuation at 90% of the buying price. The missing 10% is what economists call a deadweight loss: a waste of resources that could be averted without making anyone worse off. In other words, if the giver gave the cash value of the purchase instead of the gift itself, the recipient could then buy what she really wants, and be better off for no extra cost. If the results are generalized, a waste of one dollar in ten represents a huge aggregate loss to society. It suggests that in America, where givers spend $40 billion on Christmas gifts, $4 billion is being lost annually in the process of gift-giving. Add in birthdays, weddings and non-Christian occasions, and the figure would balloon. So should economists advocate an end to gift-giving, or at least press for money to become the gift of choice？
Why do some people regard the holiday season in western economies a treat？
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Man should take the philosophy of thrift by ______.
A．They tend to put lots of make-up on face.B．They will eat more cucumbers.C．They tend
Since 1975 advocates of humane treatment of animals have broadened their goals to oppose the use of animals for fur, leather, wool, and food. They have mounted protests against all forms of hunting and the trapping of animals in the wild. And they have joined environmentalists in urging protection of natural habitats from commercial or residential development. The occasion for these added emphases was the publication in 1975 of "Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals" by Peter Singer, formerly a professor of philosophy at Oxford University in England.
This book gave a new impetus to the animal rights movement. The post-1975 animal rights activists arc far more vocal than their predecessors, and the organizations to which they belong arc generally more radical. Many new organizations arc formed. The tactics of the activists arc designed to catch the attention of the public. Since the mid-1980s there have been frequent news reports about animal right organizations picketing stores that sell furs, harassing hunters in the wild, or breaking into laboratories to free animals. Some of the more extreme organizations advocate the use of assault, armed terrorism, and death threats to make their point. Aside from making isolated attacks on people who wear fur coats or trying to prevent hunters from killing animals, most of the organizations have directed their tactics at institutions. The results of the protests and other tactics have been mixed. Companies arc reducing reliance on animal testing. Medical research has been somewhat curtailed by legal restrictions and the reluctance of younger workers to use animals in research. New tests have been developed to replace the use of animals. Some well-known designers have stopped using fur. While the general public tends to agree that animals should be treated humanely, most people arc unlikely to give up eating meat or wearing goods made from leather and wool. Giving up genuine fur has become less of a problem since fibers used to make fake fur such as the Japanese invention Kanecaron can look almost identical to real fur. Some of the strongest opposition to the animal rights movement has come from hunters and their organizations. But animal rights activists have succeeded in marshaling public opinion to press for state restrictions on hunting in several parts of the nation.
1975 was an important year in the history of animal treatment because ______.
As our eyes ranged over the broad shoulders of the mountain, the eoncepti0n of its ______
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