Since World War II, all nations of the world have shown a great interest in

游客2024-03-08  5

问题     Since World War II, all nations of the world have shown a great interest in economic growth. Most of them have shown a percentage increase of their GNP each year, the highly developed nations having shown the greatest growth rates. However, in spite of their growth rates, these nations have been plagued by two serious problems; inflation and unemployment. At one time economists believe that there was a trade off between inflation and unemployment; that generally prices would rise faster than wages and employment, but these would quickly fall, and that a fall in wages would bring a fall in prices. However, for some time the Western economies have been suffering from both continually increasing inflation and continually increasing unemployment.
    Other problems have accompanied technological development. These include the pollution of water and air by the waste of factories, dumped solid wastes from many technical operations (including atomic ones) , and the deterioration of workers’ health in many factories, mines and other industrial operations. The concentration of population in cities has given rise to many problems of housing, educational and medical services, and higher and higher crime rates. These are the social costs of economic growth which must be met by the society. Yet the costs for meeting these problems is not computed in the GNP.
    Technological development and the economic growth dependent on it have brought about great changes in the economic systems which were described by the classical economists. Production has been concentrated into a few large corporations, such as the oil companies and the automobile producers. At the same time, it has been the practice for large companies to buy whole or controlling interests in unrelated areas of production: aircraft companies which own radio and television stations or even book publishing companies, for example. Some of these large corporations are frequently operating in many countries of the world; they are then called multi-national companies. These practices have centralized economic activity, completely destroying the free market which was the basis of classical economics, and have greatly changed the concept of free trade. This development in the Western world has brought its economic systems closer to the command market systems of the former USSR. In both the Western and Eastern economic system there has been a greater centralization of economic production, which has brought about more confusing complexity in the relationships of economic activities. At the same time larger bureaucracies, both in privately owned corporations and in governments, have become necessary to cope with the increasingly complex problems. [br] The word "plagued" (Line 3, Para. 1) probably means________.

选项 A、disturbed
B、suffered
C、interfered
D、annoyed

答案 I

解析 由题干中的“plagued”(Line 3,Para.1)定位至第一段第三句。推理判断题。定位句表达的意思是:尽管这些国家的国民生产总值增长率高,但它们还是受到两个严重问题的________,即通货膨胀和失业。由此推测plagued意为“困扰;折磨;使苦恼”,故选D)。
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