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  3. A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if

游客2025-04-02  31
问题     A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world’s best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.
    It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea’s LG Electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America’s machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.
    All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.
    How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Management. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as " a golden age of business management in the United States". [br] The author seems to believe the revival of the U.S. economy in the 1990s can be attributed to the ______.
选项 A、turning of the business cycle
B、restructuring of industry
C、improved business management
D、success in education
答案 A
解析 本题可参照文章的第4段。从中可知，1995年当日本还在奋力拼搏时，美国就可以追忆这五年来稳定发展的历史了。很少有美国人把这一巨变完全归咎于美元贬值和商业周期的循环这些明显原因。人们不再自我否定，取代的是盲目的骄傲。借用哈佛大学肯尼迪管理学院行政院长Richard Cavanagh的话说：“美国的工业改变了结构，消除了臃肿，学得更加明智。”来自华盛顿特区的智囊团——卡托研究院的Stephen Moore说：“我作为一个美国人看到我们的企业在提高生产率时，我感到骄傲。”哈佛商学院的William Sahlman认为人们将会把这个时期当作“美国企业管理的黄金时代”来追忆。据此可知，作者认为美国经济的复兴可能是因为美元的贬值或者商业周期的循环。A项与文章的意思相符，因此A项为正确答案。
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