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  3. Borrow, Speculate and Hope The National Association

Borrow, Speculate and Hope The National Association

游客2023-12-11  7
问题                         Borrow, Speculate and Hope
    The National Association of Securities Dealers is investigating whether some brokerage houses are inappropriately pushing individuals to borrow large sums on their houses to invest in the stock market. Can we persuade the association to investigate would-be privatizers of Social Security? For it is now apparent that the Bush administration’s privatization proposal will amount to the same thing borrow trillions, put the money in the stock market and hope.
    Privatization would begin by diverting payroll taxes, which pay for current Social Security benefits, into personal investment accounts. The government would have to borrow to make up the shortfall. This would sharply increase the government’s debt. "Nevermind", privatization advocates say, "in the long run, people would make so much on personal accounts that the government could save money by cutting retirees’ benefits."
    Even so, if personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all. However, privatizers claim that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits.
    We can argue at length about whether the high stock returns such schemes assume are realistic (they aren’t) , but let’s cut to the chase in essence, such schemes involve having the government borrow heavily and put the money in the stock market. That’s because the government would, in effect, rob workers’ gains in their personal accounts by cutting those workers’ benefits.
    Once you realize what privatization really means, it doesn’t sound too responsible, does it? But the details make it considerably worse. First, financial markets would, correctly, treat the reality of huge deficits today as a much more important indicator of the government’s financial health than the mere promise that government could save money by cutting benefits in the distant future. After all, a government bond is a legally binding promise to pay, while a benefits formula that supposedly cuts costs 40 years from now is nothing more than a suggestion to future Congresses. If a privatization plan passed in 2005 called for steep benefit cuts in 2045, what are the odds that those cuts would really happen? Second, a system of personal accounts would pay huge brokerage fees. Of course, from Wall Street’s point of view that’s a benefit, not a cost. [br] According to its advocates, who will gain most from the privatization of Social Security?
选项 A、Investors in stock markets.
B、Retired workers in the future.
C、The future Congresses.
D、Account information brokers.
答案 C
解析 本题考查事实细节。第二段末句提到，私有化的提倡者认为，从长期来看，人们在个人账户中会赚很多钱，以至于政府可以通过削减退休人员的福利而省钱。第三段末句提到，他们声称是政府而非工人从中获益最大。[C]项指的是未来的政府，是最大受益方。同时排除[B]。[A]项太泛, 私有化方案中的投资者是指那些福利金被用于股票投资的工人。[D]项在文章最后两句中出现，即作者在论述私有化方案是不负责任的政府举措时，指出原因之一是个人账户系统将偿付巨额的经纪费用。因此[D]项只是作者认为的受益方。
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