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听力原文:W: How did you do on the maths exam, John?
M: I barely made it. It was just a passing score but better than I had expected.
Q: What do we learn from the conversation?
(14)

A. John didn't pass, although he had tried his best.
B. John did better than he thought he was able to.
C. John got an excellent score, which was unexpected.
D. John was disappointed at his math score.

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Like chess or painting or writing novels, making money is a very specialized skill. But for some reason we treat this skill differently. No one complains when a few people surpass all the rest at playing chess or writing novels, but when a few people make more money than the rest, we get editorials saying this is wrong. Why? The pattern of variation seems no different than for any other skill. What causes people to react so strongly when the skill is making money?
I think there arc three reasons we treat making money as different: the misleading model of wealth we learn as children; the disreputable way in which, till recently, most fortunes were accumulated; and the worry that great variations in income are somehow bad for society. As far as I can tell, the first is mistaken, the second outdated, and the third empirically false. Could it be that, in a modem democracy, variation in income is actually a sign of health?
When I was five I thought electricity was created by electric sockets. I didn't realize there were power plants out there generating it. Likewise, it doesn't occur to most kids that wealth is something that has to be generated. It seems to be something that flows from parents.
Because of the circumstances in which they encounter it, children tend to misunderstand wealth. They confuse it with money. They think that there is a fixed amount of it. And they think of it as something that's distributed by authorities (and so should be distributed equally), rather than something that has to be created (and might be created unequally). In fact, wealth is not money. Money is just a convenient way of trading one form. of wealth for another. Wealth is the underlying stuff--the goods and services we buy. When you travel to a rich or poor country, you don't have to look at people' s bank accounts to tell which kind you're in. You can see wealth-- in buildings and streets, in the clothes and the health of the people.
Where does wealth come from? People make it. This was easier to grasp when most people lived on farms, and made many of the things they wanted with their own hands. Then you could see in the house, the herds, and the granary the wealth that each family created. It was obvious then too that the wealth of the world was not a fixed quantity that had to be shared out, like slices of a pie. If you wanted more wealth, you could make it.
This is just as true today, though few of us create wealth directly for ourselves. Mostly we create wealth for other people in exchange for money, which we then trade for the forms of wealth we want. Because kids are unable to create wealth, whatever they have has to be given to them. And when wealth is something you're given, then of course it seems that it should be distributed equally. As in most families it is. The kids see to that. "Unfair," they cry, when one sibling (兄弟姐妹) gets more than another.
In the real world, you can't keep living off your parents. If you want something, you either have to make it, or do something of equivalent value for someone else, in order to get them to give you enough money to buy it. In the real world, wealth is (except for a few specialists like thieves and speculators) something you have to create, not something that's distributed by Daddy. And since the ability and desire to create it vary from person to person, it's not made equally.
You get paid by doing or making something people want, and those who make more money are often simply better at doing what people want. Top actors make a lot more money than B-list actors.

A. Y
B. N
C. NG

In modem times, most of us create wealth directly for ourselves.

A. Y
B. N
C. NG

以下关于警察的说法,错误的是()。

A. 生产力的发展、私有制的出现是警察产生的直接原因
B. 警察的本质体现在不仅是阶级统治的工具,也是国家机器的重要组成部分
C. 警察是国家重要的行政力量
D. 警察的发展呈现出一定的阶段性特点,这是由社会条件发展的不同状况决定的

听力原文:W: Was Robert elected to the committee?
M: Yes. In fact he was made chairman. But he only agreed to take the job if they let him have the final say.
Q: What does Robert intend to do?
(19)

A. To do whatever the committee asks him to.
B. To make decisions in agreement with the committee.
C. To run the committee hid way.
D. To make himself the committee chairman.

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