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  3. On 60 Minutes Sunday, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was asked about

On 60 Minutes Sunday, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was asked about

游客2024-05-01  21
问题     On 60 Minutes Sunday, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was asked about rising income inequality in the United States. Curiously, The New York Times thought his response would appeal to liberals.
    "It’s a very bad development, " he said. "It’s creating two societies. And it’s based very much, I think, on educational differences. The unemployment rate we’ve been talking about. If you’re a college graduate, unemployment is 5%. If you’re a high school graduate, it’s 10% or more. It’s a very big difference. "
    Is this true? Of course liberals would be pleased that Bernanke acknowledges that inequality is a moral and economic problem. But would they agree with his diagnosis of the cause? Partially—certainly education affects one’s earning potential enormously in a service economy—but there are many other important phenomena at play.
    "It doesn’t explain why all the money went to the very top, why college graduates haven’t seen a wage increase in 10 years, or why most of the growth of inequality is among people with the same education, " says Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. Mishel points to a 2007 speech by Bernanke himself that lays out a fuller exploration of the inequality situation.
    Unequal education explains about 60 to 70 percent of widening inequality, estimates Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor and author of the new book Aftershock, which focuses heavily on inequality. The rest can be attributed to a variety of factors. Wall Street bankers and traders have seen an explosive growth in income by tying their compensation to performance rather than the fee-for-service program that used to dominate as it does in other industries. Now, when the market goes up, Wall Street takes a healthy chunk from their investors, but when it goes down, the only people who lose are the investors.
    Another factor that Reich cites is the decline of labor unions. Unions represent an ever-shrinking proportion of private-sector workers, and unionized workers earn more than their nonunion counterparts. The minimum wage has also declined, adjusted for inflation.
    The real elephant in the room, though, is health care. The cost of employer-based health-insurance plans varies less than the difference in wages, and everyone’s health insurance is getting more expensive. So much of the wage growth that should have gone into workers’ paychecks has gone to just keeping their health benefits the same. Our unusual system of tying health insurance to employment rather than, say, legal residency, as in most advanced democracies, is a historical accident. Undoing it and replacing it with a system such as universal single-payer health care is the single biggest thing we could do to address stagnant(停滞的)wage growth.  [br] What is the advantage of connecting income to performance for Wall Street bankers and traders?
选项 A、It helps them perform better.
B、It brings industries more profits.
C、They can earn much in a strong market and lose nothing in a weak market.
D、They can abolish current programs and make performance the sole standard of income.
答案 C
解析 根据题干关键词performance，Wall Street bankers and dealers定位到文章第五段第三、四句； Wall Street bankers and traders have seen an explosive growth in income…when the market goes up，Wall Street takes a healthy chunk from their investors，but when it goes down，the only people who lose are the investors．可知，华尔街的银行家和交易商们将酬金与业绩挂钩而使收入增加。市场行情上涨．华尔街从投资者们手中拿走一笔丰厚的酬金，但是当市场行情下跌时．输家只有投资者。所以C)项符合题意。
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