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  3. 1 I believe that we all accept the principle that an affluent society must do what it can to prevent hunger and misery, and

1 I believe that we all accept the principle that an affluent society must do what it can to prevent hunger and misery, and

admin2010-03-25  84
问题    1     I believe that we all accept the principle that an affluent society must do what it can to prevent hunger and misery, and also to provide equality of opportunity to those who have been denied it. But how far can a society go in the redistribution of wealth without changing the very nature of society? I think this is a problem that we’ve got to face. I do not think that a majority in Congress are trying to face it, or realize that it is a problem, because so many of them are still hard at work at this business of redistributing income.
   2     All that reminds me of what happened in the universities during the 1960’s and 1970’s- events that I witnessed from a ringside seat. During this period we had a fashion of giving A’s to every student--there were no failures. The effect on academic life was devastating. When illiterate or lazy students could get an A average, good students stopped studying. The result was a profound change in academic life: formerly dropouts were those who failed in their studies; in the 1960’s and 1970’s most of the dropouts were the most gifted and brilliant students, who found that college had become meaningless.
   3    What happens in the schools is not unlike what happens in society at large when the penalties of improvidence, laziness, or ignorance are not just softened, but removed. When there is no such thing as failure, there is no such thing as success either. Motivation, the desire to excel, the urge to accomplishment—all these disappear. The dynamism of society is lost.
   4     This, I’m afraid, is the direction in which our society has been going steadily for many years. The biggest losers are the brightest and most capable men and women. But the average person is a loser too. Faced with no challenge, assured of a comfortable living whether they work or not, such persons become willing dependents, content with a parasitical relationship to the rest of society.
   5     What is significant in our time is that there is a whole class of people interested in encouraging this parasitism. Many welfare officials and social workers are threatened with a loss of their power if there is a marked reduction in the number of their clients, so they are motivated to increase rather than decrease welfare dependency.
   6     Politicians, too, have flourished by getting increased federal grants for this or that disadvantaged group. They go back to their constituents and say, "Look what I’ve done for you," and get reelected.  These are the officeholders who are far more interested in being reelected than in doing what is good for people, good for the economy, good for the nation.
   7     If everybody is rewarded just for being alive, you get the same sort of effect as you do when you reward every student just for being enrolled. You destroy not only education, you destroy society by giving A’s to everyone. This is a philosophical consideration that bothers me very much as I sit in the United States Senate and see its great budget allocation going through.
What might be "the very nature of society" (Para. 1) in the author’s mind?
选项 A、equality
B、harmony
C、competitiveness
D、fairness
答案C
解析 本题为一般推理题。据第2段可推知。
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