Poverty exists because our society is an unequal one ,and there are extremely strong and powerful political pressures to keep i

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问题    Poverty exists because our society is an unequal one ,and there are extremely strong and powerful political  pressures to keep it that way. Any attempt to redistribute wealth and income in the United States will inevitably be opposed by powerful middle and upper class interests. People can be relatively rich only if others are relatively poor, and since power is concentrated in the hands of the rich, public policies will continue to reflect their interests rather than those of the poor.
   As Herbert Gans (1973) has pointed out, poverty is actually functional from the point of view of the non-poor. Poverty ensures that" dirty" work gets done. If there were, no poor people to scrub floors and empty waste, these jobs would have to be rewarded with high incomes before anyone would touch them. Poverty creates jobs for many of the non-poor, such as police officers, welfare workers, pawnbrokers, and government bureaucrats. Poverty makes life easier for the rich by providing them with cooks, gardeners, and other workers  to perform basic chores while their employers enjoy more, pleasurable activities. Poverty provides a market for inferior goods and services, such as day-old bread, run-down automobiles, or the advice of incompetent physicians and lawyers. Poverty makes middle-class values seem acceptable. To the middle class, the fate of the poor — who are supposed to lack the virtues of thrift, honesty, and a taste for hard work — only confirms the desirability of qualities the poor are thought to lack. Poverty also provides a group that can be made to absorb the costs of change. For example, the poor suffer the main part or force of unemployment caused by automaton, and it is their homes, not those of the wealthy, that are demolished when a route has to be found for a new highway. There is no intentional, conscious "secret plan" of the wealthy to keep the poor in poverty. It is just that poverty is an inevitable outcome of the American economic system; which the poor are politically powerless to influence change.
The author thinks that the poor______.

选项 A、lack such desirable qualities as saving or honesty
B、are not inclined to work hard
C、are not willing to bear the costs of change
D、have no power to change the present economic system

答案D

解析 此处考查作者对穷人的看法,因此可定位到第二段第八句和最后一句,意思是:对于中产阶级来说,穷人,被认为是丧失厂节俭、诚实、努力工作等良好的品质的穷人的命运证明了这些优良的品质就是穷人所缺乏的,这是富人们的观点,而作者则认为,贫困是美国经济体制的必然产物,穷人们由于政治上的弱势无力影响或者改变这种经济体制。穷人们并非不愿意承担改革的成本,而是他们对改革根本无能为力,因此选[D]穷人无力改变现存的经济体制,同时排除[C]。[A]、[B]都是中产阶级的观点,故排除。
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