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America is a country that now sits atop the cherished myth that work provide

游客2024-06-03  17
问题     America is a country that now sits atop the cherished myth that work provides rewards, that working people can support their families. It’s a myth that has become so divorced from reality that it might as well begin with the words "Once upon a time". Today 1.6 million New Yorkers suffer from "food insecurity", which is a fancy way of saying they don’t have enough to eat. Some are the people who come in at night and clean the skyscrapers that glitter along the river. Some pour coffee and take care of the aged parents of the people who live in those buildings. The American Dream for the well-to-do grows from the bowed backs of the working poor, who too often have to choose between groceries and rent.
    In a new book called "The Betrayal of Work", Beth Shulman says that even in the booming 1990s one out of every four American workers made less than $8. 70 an hour, an income equal to the government’s poverty level for a family of four. Many, if not most, of these workers had no health care, sick pay or retirement provisions.
    We ease our consciences, Shulman writes, by describing these people as "low skilled", as though they’re not important or intelligent enough to deserve more. But Iow-skilled workers today are better educated than ever before, and they constitute the linchpin (SYNC) of American industry. When politicians crow (得意洋洋地说) that happy days are here again because jobs are on the rise, it’s these jobs they’re really talking about. Five of the 10 occupations expected to grow big in the next decade are in the lowest-paying job groups. And before we sit back and decide that’s just the way it; is, it’s instructive to consider the rest of the world. While the bottom 10 percent of American workers earn just 37 percent of our average wage, their counterparts in other industrialized countries earn upwards of 60 percent. And those are countries that provide health care and child care, which eases the economic pinch considerably.
    Almost 40 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, a family with a car and a house in the suburbs felt prosperous. Today that same family may well feel poor, overwhelmed by credit card debt, a second mortgage and the cost of the stuff that has become the backbone of American life. When the middle Class feels poor, the poor have little chance for change, or even recognition. [br] By saying "it might as well begin with the words ’Once upon a time’"(Line 3,Para. 1), the author suggests that the American myth is ______.
选项
答案 divorced from reality/unrealistic
解析 文章一开始作者讲到美国人一直相信这样一个神话：只要工作就有回报，工作的人完全可以养家．但紧接着作者说“It’s a myth that has become so divorced from reality that it might as well begin with the words‘Once upon a time．”(这个神话和现实有如此大的差距以至于我们在这么说之前得加上“很久很久以前……”。)所以本题可以填写原文中的原词“divorced from reality”．这样要填写的句子的意思就符合原文了，作者说“我们最好在前面加上很久很久以前”，暗示美国神话已经脱离了现实。基于对这部分意思的理解，也可以填写“unrealistic”，表示这一神话般的说法是不现实的。
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