2. 职称英语
  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  64
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] What does the author mean by saying "So birthing a clone equals cha-ching. "(Line 4, Para. 3)?
选项 A、Cloning a baby is surprising.
B、Birthing a clone baby is profitable.
C、Cloning a baby is troublesome.
D、Cloning a baby is illegal.
答案 B
解析 语义理解题。第三段主要介绍了法国经济学教授那篇旧论文的论证方式及其他观点，并指出论文作者甚至预测代孕妈妈的收入将比肩华尔街人。第二段提到，克隆人的收入将高于非克隆人，因而人们就会花更多的钱来克隆婴儿。定位句中的关键词cha-ching是一个拟声词，模仿现金出纳机打开钱盒子准备收钱的声音，在此表示有钱入账。因此得出答案为B)。A)“克隆婴儿令人惊讶”和C)“克隆婴儿很麻烦”，文中没有提及这两项内容，故排除；D)“克隆婴儿是非法的”，无法从文中找到依据，故排除。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3569606.html
相关试题推荐
随机试题
最新回复(0)