题目内容
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Modern societies control supply and demand
A．by intervention in pricing goods and services.
B．by means of money and the price mechanism.
C．by keeping a watchful eye on price changes.
D．by fixing proper prices for specific industries.
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更多“Modern societies control suppl…”相关的问题
A．feminists have shown little interest in ancient societies
B．Bachofen's knowledge of Amazonian culture is unparalleled
C．reliable information about the ancient world is difficult to acquire
D．historians have been primarily interested in the modern period
It can be inferred that
A．the growth in number of the old is liable for the fall in that of the young.
B．the seemingly impossible statement about the main cause of aged societies is quite valid.
C．the greater dependency of babies is subject to the change in social structure.
D．the favorable conditions for continued living are perfect in modern societies.
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
What our society suffers from most today is the absence of consensus about what it and life in it ought to be; such consensus cannot be gained from society's present stage, or from fantasies about what it ought to be. For that the present is too close and too diversified, and the future too uncertain, to make believable claims about it. A consensus in the present hence can be achieved only through a shared understanding of the past, as Homer's epics informed those who lived centuries later what it meant to be Greek, and by what images and ideals they were to live their lives and organize their societies.
Most societies derive consensus from a long history, a language all their own, a common religion, common ancestry. The myths by which they live are based on all of these. But the United States is a country of immigrants, coming from a great variety of nations. Lately, it has been emphasized that an asocial, narcissistic personality has become characteristic of Americans, and that it is this type of personality that makes for the lack of well-being, because it prevents us from achieving consensus that would counteract a tendency to withdraw into private worlds. In this study of narcissism, Christopher Lash says that modern man, "tortured by self-consciousness, turns to new therapies not to free himself of his personal worries but to find meaning and purpose in life, to find something to live for". There is widespread distress because national morale has declined, and we have lost an earlier sense of national vision and purpose.
Contrary to rigid religions or political beliefs, as are found in totalitarian societies, our culture is one of the great individual differences, at least in principle and in theory; but this leads to disunity, even chaos. Americans believe in the value of diversity, but just because ours is a society based on individual diversity, it needs consensus about some dominating ideas more than societies based on uniform. origin of their citizens. Hence, if we are to have consensus, it must be based on a myth—a vision about a common experience, a conquest that made us Americans, as the myth about the conquest of Troy formed the Greeks. Only a common myth can offer relief from the fear that life is without meaning or purpose. Myths permit us to examine our place in the world by comparing it to a shared idea. Myths are shared fantasies that form. the tie that binds the individual to other members of his group. Such myths help to ward off feelings of isolations, guilt, anxiety, and purposelessness—in short, they combat isolation and the breakdown of social standards and values.
This text is mainly intended to ______.
A．explore certain ways of making for a consensus.
B．spotlight the role of myths in binding a community.
C．interpret the meaning and purpose of modern life.
D．reverse the decline of social standards and values.
A coin is a piece of metal, usually disc-shaped, which bears words, designs or numbers showing its value. Until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coins were given monetary worth based on the exact amount of metal contained in them, but most modern coins are based on face value—the value that the governments choose to give them, which doesn't show the actual metal content. Coins have been made of gold, silver, copper, aluminum (铝) , nickel(镍) , lead, zinc (锌) , plastic and in China even from tea leaves. Most governments now issue paper money in the form. of bills, which are really" promise to pay". Paper money is obviously easier to handle and much more convenient in the modern world. Checks and credit cards are being used increasingly, and it is possible to imagine a world where "money" in the form. of coins and paper currency will no longer be used. Even today, in the United States, many places, especially filling stations will not accept cash at night for security reasons.
Barter here means ______.
A．exchanging goods for money
B．exchanging sheep for anything in the market
C．exchanging goods for goods
D．exchanging money for goods
In modern society, ceremonies for adolescence have lost their formal recognition and symbolic significance and there no longer is agreement as to what constitutes initiation ceremonies. Social ones have been replaced by a sequence of steps that lead to increased recognition and social status. For example, grade school graduation, high school graduation and college graduation constitute such a sequence, and while each step implies certain behavioral changes and social recognition, the significance of each depends on the socio-economic status and the educational ambition of the individual. Ceremonies for adolescence have also been replaced by legal definitions of status roles, rights, privileges and responsibilities. It is during the nine years from the twelfth birthday to the twenty-first that the protective and restrictive aspects of childhood and minor status are removed and adult privileges and responsibilities axe granted. The twelve-year-old is no longer considered a child and has to pay full fare for train, airplane, theater and movie tickets. Basically, the individual at this age loses childhood privileges without gaining significant adult rights. At the age of sixteen the adolescent is granted certain adult rights which increases his social status by providing him with more freedom and choices. He now can obtain a driver's license: he can leave public schools; and he can work without the restrictions of child labor laws. At the age of eighteen the law provides adult responsibilities as well as rights: the young man can now be a soldier, but he also can marry without parental permission. At the age of twenty-one the individual obtains his full legal rights as an adult. He now can vote, he can buy liquor, he can enter into financial contracts, and he is entitled to run for public office. No additional basic rights are acquired as a function of age after majority status has been attained. None of these legal provisions determine at what point adulthood has been reached but they do point to the prolonged period of adolescence.
The period of adolescence is much longer in industrial societies because ______.
A．the definition of maturity has changed
B．the industrialized society is more developed
C．more education is provided and laws against child labor are made
D．ceremonies for adolescence have lost their formal recognition and symbolic significance
Moreover, those economists who argue that allowing the free market to operate without interference is the most efficient method of establishing prices have not considered the economies of non-socialist countries other than the United States. These economies employ intentional price-fixing, usually in an overt fashion. Formal price-fixing by cartel and informal price-fixing by agreements covering the members of an industry are commonplace. Were there something peculiarly efficient about the free market and inefficient about price-fixing, the countries that have avoided the first and used the second would have suffered drastically in their economic development. There is no indication that they have.
Socialist industry also works within a framework of controlled prices. In the early 1970's, the Soviet Union began to give firms and industries some of the flexibility in adjusting prices that a more informal evolution has accorded the capitalist system. Economists in the Unites States have hailed the change as a return to the free market. But Soviet firms are no more subject to prices established by a free market over which they exercise little influence than are capitalist firms; rather, Soviet firms have been given the power to fix prices.
Notes: spell 魔力; 一阵。aggregate 总体。
The primary purpose of the text is to _____.
A．refute the theory that the free market plays a useful role in the development of industrialized societies.
B．argue that price-fixing, in one form. or another, is an inevitable part of and benefit to the economy of any industrialized society.
C．show that in industrialized societies price-fixing and the operation of the free market are not only compatible but also mutually beneficial.
D．explain the various ways in which industrialized societies can fix prices in order to stabilize the free market.
The orthodox view of human handedness is that it is connected to the bilateral specialisation of the brain that has concentrated language-processing functions on the left side of that organ. Because, long ago in the evolutionary past, an ancestor of humans underwent a contortion that twisted its head around 180' relative to its body, the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. In humans, the left brain is usually dominant. And on average, left-handers are smaller and lighter than right-handers. That should 'put them at an evolutionary disadvantage. Sporting advantage notwithstanding, therefore, the existence of left-handedness poses a problem for biologists. But Charlotte Faurie thinks he knows the answer.
As any schoolboy could tell you, winning fights enhances your status. If, in prehistory, this translated into increased reproductive success, it might have been enough to maintain a certain proportion of left-handers in the population, by balancing the costs of being left-handed with the advantages gained in fighting. If that is true, then there will be a higher proportion of left-handers in societies with higher levels of violence, since the advantages of being left-handed will be enhanced in such societies. Dr. Faurie set out to test this hypothesis. Fighting in modern societies often involves the use of technology, notably firearms, that is unlikely to give any advantage to left-handers. So Dr. Faurie decided to confine his investigation to the proportion of left-handers and the level of violence in traditional societies.
By trawling the literature, checking with police departments, and even going out into the field and asking people, Dr. Faurie found that the proportion of left-handers in a traditional society is, in deed, correlated with its homicide rate. One of the highest proportions of left-handers, for example, was found among the Yanomamo of South America. Raiding and warfare are central to Yanomarno culture. The murder rate is 4.15 per 1,000 inhabitants per year. And, according to Dr. Faurie, 22.6% of Yanomamo are left-handed. In contrast, Dioula-speaking people of Burkina Faso in West Africa are virtual pacifists. There are only 0.013 murders per 1,000 inhabitants among them and only 3.4% of the population is left-handed.
While there is no suggestion that left-handed people axe more violent than the right-handed, it looks as though they are more successfully violent. Perhaps that helps to explain the double meaning of the word "sinister".
The example of "Apollo Creed" is mentioned to show that
A．right-handers are put at a psychological disadvantage.
B．right-handers do not excel at boxing.
C．left-handers enjoy advantage in some sports.
D．left-handers are often involved in fighting.
However, it is common to hear assertions of the kind "if you were left along to a desert island a few seed potatoes would be more use to you than a million pounds" as though this proved something important about money except the undeniable fact that it would not be much use to anyone in a situation where very few of us are at all likely to find ourselves. Money in fact is a token, or symbolic object, exchangeable on demand by its holders for goods and services. Its use for these purposes is universal except within a small number of primitive agricultural communities.
Money and the price mechanism, i.e., the changes in prices expressed in money terms of different goods and services, are the means by which all modern societies regulate demand and supply for these things. Especially important are the relative changes in price of different goods and services compared with each other. To take random example: the price of house-building has over the past five years risen a good deal faster than that of domestic appliances like refrigerators, but slower than that of motor insurance or French Impressionist paintings. This fact has complex implications for students of the industry, trade unionism, town planning, insurance companies, fine-art auctions, and politics. Unpacking these implications is what economics is about, but their implications for bankers are quite different.
In general, in modem industrialized societies, services or goods produced in a context requiting a high service-content (e.g. a meal in a restaurant) are likely to rise in price more rapidly than goods capable of mass-production on a large scale. It is also a characteristic of highly developed economies that the number of workers employed in service industries tends to rise and that of workers employed in manufacturing to fall. The discomfort this truth causes has been an important source of tension in western political life for many years and is likely to remain so for many more.
Money may be thought of as
A．the unique source that Stirs up fierce love or hatred.
B．the popular thing that generates good or evil doings.
C．the symbol that signifies one's wealth and privilege.
D．the theme of nonsensical talks that relate to economy.
Text 1
The period of adolescence, i.e., the period between childhood and adulthood, may be long or short, depending on social expectations and on society’s definition as to what constitutes maturity and adulthood. In primitive societies adolescence is frequently a relatively short period of time, while in industrial societies with patterns of prolonged education coupled with laws against child labor, the period of adolescence is much longer and may include most of the second decade of one’s life. Furthermore, the length of the adolescent period and the definition of adulthood status may c
hange in a given society as social and economic conditions change. Examples of this type of change are the disappearance of the frontier in the latter part of the nineteenth century in the United States, and more universally, the industrialization of an agricultural society.
In modern society, ceremonies for adolescence have lost their formal recognition and symbolic significance and there no longer is agreement as to what constitutes initiation ceremonies. Social ones have been replaced by a sequence of steps that lead to increased recognition and social status. For example, grade school graduation, high school graduation and college graduation constitute such a sequence, and while each step implies certain behavioral changes and social recognition, the significance of each depends on the socio-economic status and the educational ambition of the i
ndividual. Ceremonies for adolescence have also been replaced by legal definitions of status roles, right, privileges and responsibilities. It is during the nine years from the twelfth birthday to the twenty-first that the protective and restrictive aspects of childhood and minor status are removed and adult privileges and responsibilities are granted. The twelve-year-old is no longer considered a child and has to pay full fare for train, airplane, theater and movie tickets. Basically, the individual at this age
loses childhood privileges without gaining significant adult rights. At the age of sixteen the adolescent is granted certain adult rights which increases his social status by providing him with more freedom and choices. He now can obtain a driver’s license; he can leave public schools; and he can work without the restrictions of child labor laws. At the age of eighteen the law provides adult responsibilities as well as ri
ghts; the young man can now be a soldier, but he also can marry without parental permission. At the age of twenty-one the individual obtains his full legal rights as an adult. He now can vote, he can buy liquor, he can enter into financial contracts, and he is entitled to run for public office. No additional basic rights are acquired as a function of age after majority status has been attained. None of these legal pro
visions determine at what point adulthood has been reached but they do point to the prolonged period of adolescence.
41. The period of adolescence is much longer in industrial societies because ________.
[A] the definition of maturity has changed
[B] the industrialized society is more developed
[C] more education is provided and laws against child labor are made
[D] ceremonies for adolescence have lost their formal recognition and symbolic significance
