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  3. Crime is significantly higher in the US than anywhere else in the developed world. Thanks to the political power of the National

Crime is significantly higher in the US than anywhere else in the developed world. Thanks to the political power of the National

admin2010-06-30  57
问题      Crime is significantly higher in the US than anywhere else in the developed world. Thanks to the political power of the National Rifle Association, Americans have access to deadly weapons, and use them, to a degree that astonishes observers abroad. Americans possess an estimated 60 million hand-guns. Since 1960 the rate of murder crime per capita has grown by 35 percent, a truly horrible statistic. Violent death rates per capita are four or five times higher than in Western Europe (while rape rates are seven times higher, and forcible robbery rates some four to ten times higher). Experts suggest that this violence has cultural roots, and cannot simply be linked to poverty. New York’s murder rate is far larger than that in the slums of Calcutta, for example, and in prosperous Seattle --recently rated the number one city in the United States for "live ability" the murder rate is seven times of Birmingham, England. Nor is violence owing to lack of police efforts and checks; at the last count, American prisons were holding more than a million convicted prisoners, a proportion of the population larger more than in South Africa or the former USSR. Three thousand out every 100,000 black American males are in prison, whereas South Africa managed to preserve apartheid by imprisoning 729 black males per 100,000.
     Doubling the number of people behind bars during the 1980s has not been very effective, therefore, in dealing with the erosion of American society, partly because of the difficulty of at tempting major social reforms in a politically decentralized, libertarian society. Any attempt to relieve homelessness and poverty in the inner cities--and the rural South --might cost a great deal of money, and a transfer of resources from the better-off (who vote) to the poor(who don’ t). Since the Boston Tea Party, middle-class Americans have had a deep aversion to paying taxes’ with some justification, since unlike Europeans they do not enjoy in return such middle-class benefits as: free college tuition, health care, subsidized cultural events, efficient public-transport systems, and so on. Perhaps funds could be made available if productivity and real growth were bounding upward. When they are not, changes in spending priorities become part of a "zero-sum game", blocked by groups who lose out.
Which areas in the U.S. have the greatest problems of homelessness and poverty?
选项 A、The inner parts of the cities and the rural areas in the south.
B、Inland cities and rural areas.
C、The south.
D、Urban areas.
答案A
解析
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