2. 职称英语
  3. The following two questions are based on the following passage: The Southfork

The following two questions are based on the following passage: The Southfork

游客2025-02-26  7
问题 The following two questions are based on the following passage:
   The Southfork Steel Company is in trouble. Since 1960 it has made guaranteed payments to retirees out of a pension fund paid into by current employees as a percentage of their salaries. The restructuring of the Southfork workforce, however, has meant that fewer employees are now needed to produce the same amount of work as in the days of the retired employees. Since current employees are unwilling to pay a larger percentage of their salaries into the pension system than their predecessors did, the pension fund will inevitably go bankrupt.  [br] Which of the following, if true, suggests that the passage is correct in its conclusion that the pension fund will inevitably go bankrupt?
选项 A、Employees who retire today will, on average, live five years longer than those who retired in the 1960s.
B、The workers’ union has consistently vetoed any efforts on the part of management to cut tire level of pension payments to retired employees.
C、Although Southfork Steel now produces almost twice as much steel as it did during the 1960s, overseas competition has driven the price of steel, adjusted for inflation, to less than one-third of its price in the 1960s, and there is no indication that pric
D、Consultants have advised Southfork management that it can improve efficiency at the plant by implementing further workforce restructuring that could decrease the total number of employees by approximately 10 percent.
E、Southfork employees in management do not take part in the general pension system, but instead pay into and collect from a separate system that guarantees higher payments.
答案 C
解析 The phenomenon described of fewer employees needed to do the same work is not necessarily an insurmountable problem for the pension system if the current employees pay more into the system than their predecessors did; this could occur if the business itself expanded dramatically and there are now more employees than in the past, or if the revenues per employee are substantially higher than in the past. Answer C discards the first of those options; if current inflation-adjusted revenues are around two-thirds of what they were in the 1960s (i.e., twice as much steel is sold at one-third the price), then there is a smaller pool of revenue to go around, and it appears that the pension fund will probably go bankrupt. Answers A and B could contribute to the problem, but they do not address the fundamental economic problem as directly as C.
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