首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
(1)It’s a golden age for studying inequality. Thomas Piketty, a French economist, set the benchmark in 2014 when his book, "Capi
(1)It’s a golden age for studying inequality. Thomas Piketty, a French economist, set the benchmark in 2014 when his book, "Capi
admin
2018-05-11
90
问题
(1)It’s a golden age for studying inequality. Thomas Piketty, a French economist, set the benchmark in 2014 when his book, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", was published in English and became a bestseller. The book mapped the contours of the crisis with a sweeping theory of economic history. Inequality, which had been on the wane from the 1930s until the 1970s, had risen sharply back toward the high levels of the Industrial Revolution, he argued. Now Branko Milanovic, an economist at the Luxembourg Income Study Centre and the City University of New York, has written a comprehensive follow-up. It reinforces how Utile is really known about economic forces of long duration.
(2)In some ways "Global Inequality" is a less ambitious book than "Capital". It is shorter, and written more like an academic working paper than a work of substantial scholarship for a wider readership.
(3)Like Mr Piketty, he begins with piles of data assembled over years of research. He sets the trends of different individual countries in a global context. Over the past 30 years the incomes of workers in the middle of the global income distribution have soared, as has pay for the richest 1% . At the same time, incomes of the working class in advanced economies have stagnated. This dynamic helped create a global middle class. It also caused global economic inequality to plateau, and perhaps even decline, for the first time since industrialisation began.
(4)To help interpret these facts, Mr Milanovic provides the readers with a series of neat mental models. He muses, for instance, that at the dawn of industrialisation, inequality within countries(or class-based inequality)was responsible for the largest gaps between rich people and poor. After industrialisation, inequality across countries(or location-based inequality)became more important. But as gaps between countries become ever more narrow, class-based inequality will become more important as most of the differences in incomes between rich people and poor people will once again be due to gaps within countries. He seasons the discussion with interesting comments, such as how incomes and inequality fell over the course of the Roman Empire.
(5)Mr Milanovic’s boldest contribution is about "Kuznets waves", which he offers as an alternative to two other prevailing theories of inequality. Simon Kuznets, a 20th-century economist, argued that inequality is low at low levels of development, rises during industrialisation and falls as countries reach economic maturity: high inequality is the temporary side-effect of the developmental process. Mr Piketty offered an alternative explanation: that high levels of inequality are the natural state of modern economies. Only unusual events, like the two world wars and the Depression of the 1930s, disrupt that normal equilibrium.
(6)Mr Milanovic suggests that both are mistaken. Across history, he reckons, inequality has tended to flow in cycles: Kuznets waves. In the pre-industrial period, these waves were governed by Malthusian dynamics: inequality would rise as countries enjoyed a spell of good fortune and high incomes, then fall as war or famine dragged average income back to subsistence level. With industrialisation, the forces creating Kuznets waves changed: to technology, openness and policy(TOP, as he shortens it). In the 19th century technological advance, globalisation and policy shifts all worked together in mutually reinforcing ways to produce dramatic economic change. Workers were reallocated from farms to factories, average incomes and inequality soared and the world became unprecedentedly interconnected. Then a combination of forces, some malign(war and political upheaval)and some benign(increased education)squeezed inequality to the lows of the 1970s.
(7)Since then, the rich world has been riding a new Kuznets wave, propelled by another era of economic change. Technological progress and trade work together to squeeze workers, he says: cheap technology made in foreign economies undermines the bargaining power of rich-world workers directly, and makes it easier for firms to replace people with machines. Workers’ declining economic power is compounded by lost political power as the very rich use their fortunes to influence candidates and elections.
(8)This diagnosis carries with it a predictive element. Mr Milanovic expects rich-world inequality to keep rising, in America especially, before eventually declining. Importantly, he argues that the downswing in inequality that occurs on the backside of a Kuznets wave is an inevitable result of the preceding rise. Where Mr Piketty sees the inequality-compressing historical events of the early 20th century as an accident, Mr Milanovic believes them to be the direct result of soaring inequality. The search for foreign investment opportunities engendered imperialism and set the stage for war. There are parallels, if imperfect ones, to the modern economy: rich economies seem to be stagnating as the very rich struggle to find places to earn good returns on their piles of wealth.
(9)Mr Milanovic’s analysis leads him to consider some dark possibilities as he looks ahead. America looks to be falling into the grips of an undemocratic plutocracy(富豪统治), he says, which is dependent on an expanding security state. In Europe right-wing nativism(本土主义)is on the rise. The good news is that emerging economies will probably continue on their path toward rich-world incomes—though that, he allows, is not guaranteed, and could be threatened by political crisis in other markets.
(10)The book’s conclusion is a little unsatisfying. A theory in which rising inequality eventually triggers countervailing social dislocations feels intuitively right, but it also leaves many important questions unanswered. When is war, rather than revolution, the probable outcome of inequality? Are governments at the mercy of the cycle, or can they act pre-emptively to flatten out the waves and avoid crises of high inequality? Mr Milanovic’s contributions are ultimately similar to those made by Mr Piketty. The data he provides offer a clearer picture of great economic puzzles, and his bold theorising chips away at tired economic orthodoxies. But the grand theory does as much to reveal the scale of contemporary ignorance as to illuminate the mechanics of the global economy.
According to Mr. Milanovic, the Kuznets wave in rich countries is currently governed by______.
选项
A、technological progress and trade
B、Malthusian dynamics
C、technology, openness and policy
D、big political changes and improved education
答案
A
解析
细节题。作者在第七段第一句中提到自上世纪70年代以来,富裕国家就一直处在新一轮的“库兹涅茨波浪”之上,并指出这新一轮的“库兹涅茨波浪”是由另一个经济变革时代所推动的,然后在第二句详细解释出现变化的是技术进步和贸易,因此[A]为答案。第六段第三句提到在前工业化时期,“库兹涅茨波浪”是由马尔萨斯动力学控制,故排除[B];第六段第四句指出在工业化时期,生成“库兹涅茨波浪”的力量是技术、开放和政策,第五句进一步强调在19世纪时,技术进步、全球化和政策转变以互相强化的方式共同发挥作用,从而导致巨大的经济变化,故排除[C]和[D]。
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.kaotiyun.com/show/QWoK777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
A、Oneminute.B、Halfaminute.C、20seconds.D、10seconds.D访谈中女士提到,招聘者在每份简历上只会花10秒左右的时间,因此本题选D。
CulturalDifferencesbetweenEastandWestI.FactorsleadingtotheculturaldifferencesA.Differentculture【T1】______【T1】___
PASSAGEFOURWhatisthewriter’stoneinthispassage?
A、Threemonths.B、Sixmonths.C、Ninemonths.D、Itisnotfixed.AMissChan提及她在招聘信息中看到该职位要求有三个月的试用期(probationaryperiod),故A项正确。注意
A、Greatgeneralknowledge.B、Frequentinteraction.C、Morespontaneity.D、Goodintonation.D此题询问在演讲过程中要注意什么。其中女士说到声音的起伏也很重要,这会让人听
Today,Iamgoingtoidentifysometypicalresearchproblemsandalsosharewithyouthesolutionstotheseproblems.Thefirst
寂寞需要时间,也需要心情。面对生活节奏越来越快的现代人,寂寞似乎少有藏身之地。但是,寂寞却是深刻认识自我、凸现个性的必不可少的前提。不过,寂寞如酒,在长时间的封存和孤独中,不但没有消失它原有的火一般的烈性,反而增添了几分浓郁的芳香。它是人们心灵中的一粒生命
Theprocessofacquiringtheself-disciplineforJapanesebeginsinchildhood.Indeed,onemaysayitbeginsatbirth—howearly
Manyofthecompanieswithcommercialproductsareexperiencingtheunusualhard-timeofpioneers,includingproductionkinks,c
随机试题
市国家(地方)税务局属于市政府的【】
对于咳嗽的描述,正确的是【】
王某诉钱某返还借款案审理中,王某向法院提交了一份有钱某签名、内容为钱某向王某借款5万元的借条,证明借款的事实;钱某向法院提交了一份有王某签名、内容为王某收到钱某返还借款5万元并说明借条因王某过失已丢失的收条。经法院质证,双方当事人确定借条和收条所说的5万元
记名股票是指在股票和股份公司的股东名册上记载股东的姓名的股票,它有以下()特点。
在向投资者推介私募基金之前,筹集机构应对投资者风险识别能力和风险承担能力进行评估,投资者的评估结果有效期最长不得超过()年。
下列关于信用风险的说法中,正确的是()
从配偶一方死亡到配偶另一方死亡是家庭的()阶段。
图1所示场景出自哪部舞剧作品?()
Beingdeeplyrootedintradition,suchideascannotbechangedeasily.
TodayIwouldliketotellyouabouttheeffectsofoldageonhealth.Actuallytodayalotof【C1】______havetakenplaceinthe
最新回复
(
0
)