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  3. Recently, a nearly decade old paper on the economic effects of human cloning

Recently, a nearly decade old paper on the economic effects of human cloning

游客2024-04-24  36
问题     Recently, a nearly decade old paper on the economic effects of human cloning by a French economics professor has been getting some attention. The paper argues that rather than an army of low-level cloned workers or fighters as is predicted in Huxley’s Brave New World or Star Wars, cloning will lead to more and more higher skilled workers. That’s because the returns of cloning people who can make a lot of money will be higher than cloning average Joes. And when it comes to cloning, we’re in it for the money, just like everything else. What’s more, it will probably be only the rich who will be able to afford to clone themselves at the start.
    The result, at least at first, will be a rapid rise in our already disturbing levels of income inequality. Clones will earn more and more money, and those of us who reproduce the old fashion way will likely have poorer and poorer offspring. Recently, Barbara Kiviat wrote two essays on how income inequality was a major contributor to the financial crisis. So you do the math. If cloning leads to income inequality and income inequality leads to financial crises, then we’ve got a problem.
    The paper has a surprising amount of math for a topic such as human cloning, which to the best of my knowledge doesn’t yet exist. And it has some out there ideas, like the guess that surrogate(代孕者)mothers might soon have salaries that match Wall Street. If cloned babies have higher expected income levels, then people will pay more for them to be made. So birthing a clone equals cha-ching.
    So how real is an economic threat is human cloning? Not much yet. Being that financial crisis as JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon put it happen every five to seven years, we will have two or three more credit crunches(信贷紧缩)before clones are walking the earth, if ever. But here’s the point, while we are doing a good job of addressing the problems on Wall Street that led to this financial crisis, we are doing very little to address the social ills that lead to financial crises.
    Recessions, particularly severe ones, have a way of lowering income inequality. That’s what happened in the 1940s and 1950s. That doesn’t seem to be happening this time. New York City, as the New York Times reports today, and particularly its rich Manhattanites, is regaining its economic health faster than the rest of the nation. The key to leveling the income playing field is taxes and education. Taxes can move wealth down the income ladder. Education can allow people to move up. Until we address those two issues, we probably will have more economic crises to suffer in the future. [br] What should be done to reduce income inequality according to the passage?
选项 A、Increasing severe recessions.
B、Promoting economic development.
C、Reforming tax and education.
D、Adding protection to the poor.
答案 C
解析 事实细节题。定位句指出，要缓解收入不均需要从两个方面着手，即税收和教育，税收能够使处于收入阶梯下层的人分享财富，教育能使人们沿着收入阶梯向上行进。因此答案为C)。A)“加剧严重的经济衰退”，第一、三句提到，经济衰退尤其是严重的经济衰退，可以缓解收入不均，但这次却似乎没有出现那种情形。由此可知，严重的经济衰退并不总是能缓解收人不均，故排除A)；B)“促进经济发展”和D)“加强对穷人的保护”，文中均未提及，故排除。
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