首页
登录
职称英语
Some rituals of modern domestic living vary little throughout the developed
Some rituals of modern domestic living vary little throughout the developed
游客
2025-04-08
26
管理
问题
Some rituals of modern domestic living vary little throughout the developed world. One such is the municipal refuse collection, usually once a week, your rubbish bags or the contents of your bin disappear into the bowels of a special lorry and are carted away to the local tip. To economists, this ceremony is peculiar, because in most places it is free. Yes, households pay for the service out of local taxes. 【R6】______Yet the marginal cost of rubbish disposal is not zero at all. The more people throw away, the more rubbish collectors and trucks are needed, and the more the local council has to pay in landfill and tipping fees.
【R7】______But as Don Fullerton and Thomas Kinnaman, two American economists, have found, this seemingly easy application of economic sense to an everyday problem has surprisingly intricate and sometimes disappointing results. In the past few years, several American towns and cities have started charging households for generating rubbish. The commonest system is to sell stickers or tags which householders attach to rubbish bags or cans. Only bags with these labels are picked up in the weekly collection.
In the paper published last year Fullerton and Kinnaman studied the effects of one such scheme, introduced in July 1992 in Charlottesville, Virginia, a town of about 40,000 people. Residents were charged 80 cents for each sticker. This may sound like the sensible use of market forces. In fact, the authors conclude, the schemes benefits did not cover the cost of printing stickers, the sticker sellers commissions, and the wages of the people running the scheme. 【R8】______
This is inefficient: compacting is done better by machines at landfill sites than by individuals, however enthusiastically. The weight of rubbish collected in Charlottesville fell by a modest 14% .
【R9】______The one bright spot in all this seems to have been a 15% increase in the weight of materials recycled, suggesting that people chose to recycle free rather than pay to have their refuse carted away. But the fee may have little to do with the growth in recycling, as many citizens were already participating in Charlottesville’s voluntary recycling scheme.
【R10】______To discourage dumping, for instance, local councils might have to spend more on catching litters, or raise fines for littering, or cut the price of legitimate rubbish collection.
A. True, the number of bags or cans collected did fall sharply, by 37% between May and September 1992. But rather than buy more tags, people simply crammed more garbage — about 40% more into each container.
B. This looks like the most basic of economic misunderstandings: if rubbish disposal is free, people will produce too much rubbish. The obvious economic solution is to make households pay the marginal cost of disposing of their waste. That will give them an incentive to throw out less and recycle more.
C. City authorities are now considering a project to teach Government waste collectors the skills, such as what rubbish to collect and how to classify it. If approved, the project will help ease the financial burden of the city’s waste treatment.
D. It would be foolish to generalize from this one case, but the moral is clear, economic incentives sometimes produce unforeseen responses.
E. Less pleasing still, some people resorted to illegal dumping rather than pay to have their rubbish removed. This is hard to measure directly. But the authors, observing that a few households in the sample stopped putting rubbish out, guess that illegal dumping may account for 30% — 40% of the reduction in collected rubbish. F. But at the margin the price is zero: the family that fills four bins with rubbish each week pays no more than the elderly couple that fills one. [br] 【R8】
选项
答案
A
解析
上下文语义。本题空格出现在段末,应承上启下。窄格处的内容也应符合这个主题,即说明向家庭收费的方式效果不佳。符合该内容的有选项A。A选项直接提到tags(标签),指出使用标签收费后,表面上垃圾袋少了,实际上是每个垃圾容器里塞的垃圾多了。这当然是在说明收费方式并没有多大实际效果。此外选项A也使下文的内容明朗起来。
转载请注明原文地址:http://tihaiku.com/zcyy/4032049.html
相关试题推荐
Whilestillcatching-uptomeninsomespheresofmodernlife,womenappeart
Whilestillcatching-uptomeninsomespheresofmodernlife,womenappeart
Whilestillcatching-uptomeninsomespheresofmodernlife,womenappeart
Manypuremetalshavelittleusebecausetheyaretoosoft,rusttooeasily,or
Everylivingthinghasaninnerbiologicalclockthatcontrolsbehavior.The
Everylivingthinghasaninnerbiologicalclockthatcontrolsbehavior.The
Everylivingthinghasaninnerbiologicalclockthatcontrolsbehavior.The
Ourmoderncivilizationmustnotbethoughtofas_____overnight.A、beingcreated
Agoodmodernnewspaperisanextraordinarypieceofreading.Itisremarkab
Agoodmodernnewspaperisanextraordinarypieceofreading.Itisremarkab
随机试题
Ifyousmokeandyoustilldon’tbelievethatthere’sadefinitebetweensmo
Toobtainasatisfactoryresult,onemustapplytwo______ofpaintonacleansur
Gentlemendonotjustpreferblondes,butlighter-skinnedwomeningeneral,a
[originaltext]M:Tellme,Sally,whydoyouthinkthatopportunitiesforindepe
Insciencethemeaningoftheword"explain"suffers【C1】______civilization’
据报道,今年中国快递服务(courierservices)将递送大约120亿件包裹。这将使中国有可能超越美国成为世界上最大的快递市场。大多数包裹里装着网上订购
审查计息负债入账完整性的有效方法有()。A:测试内部控制B:分析利息费用账户
E公司为有色金属企业,采用火法炼铜工艺,年产阳极铜10万吨。公司下设办公室、计财
建筑施工企业超过( )日不支付劳动者工资的,属于无故拖欠工资行为。A.7 B
图示电路端口电压Uab为( )。 A.3V B.-3V C.
最新回复
(
0
)