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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  55
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] Why will cloning lead to more and more higher skilled workers according to the old paper?
选项 A、Because cloning those who can make a lot of money is more profitable.
B、Because average Joes can’t afford to clone themselves forever.
C、Because the competition between the cloned workers and the ordinary workers will improve their skills.
D、Because the rich will monopolize the cloning technology to make money.
答案 A
解析 细节推断题。定位句指出，这篇论文认为人类克隆将制造出越来越多高技能的工人。接下来三句解释其原因有两点：一是因为克隆赚大钱的人的回报比克隆普通人的回报要高，二是因为最初的时候可能只有有钱人才有财力克隆自己。第三句中的returns用作名词，意为“回报”；average Joes是一个常用短语，指“普通人”。A)中的more profitable是对第三句中the returns…will be higher的同义转述，故正确答案为A)。B)“因为普通人永远没有财力克隆自己”，第一段末句提到最初可能只有富人能克隆自己，并非表明普通人永远无法实现，故排除B)；C)“因为克隆工人与普通工人的竞争会提高他们的技能”，原文未提及，故排除；D)“因为有钱人会垄断克隆技术来赚钱”，原文并没提及有钱人有垄断此技术的想法，故排除D)。
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