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
考研
It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality o
It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality o
admin
2015-09-30
40
问题
It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality of their infrastructure. When my British mother spent several months in the US in the 1950s, it was dazzlingly futuristic. There was air conditioning, an icebox in every fridge, ubiquitous neon lights and an open road on which even the working class could afford to drive. But bit by bit over the past 30 years, the world’s first truly modern infrastructure has shown its age. It has been starved by a generation of under-investment. And Americans have adapted around it.
At some point in the next 12 months, we will discover whether the US has the will to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century. If all goes well, Congress will take steps to avert a fiscal cliff before January 1. As part of that deal lawmakers will schedule another ticking time bomb for late 2013, before which they will have to strike a larger bargain or hit another fiscal cliff. The likelihood is that Congress will shrink the already meagre federal investment budget. The hope, as the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Center puts it, is that Congress will "cut to invest" rather than doing so crudely across the board.
There are three reasons to worry. First, there is remarkably little public outrage over the dilapidation in the power grid, public roads, domestic airports and waterways. This means that lawmakers will be feeling stronger pressures in other directions(such as defending the existing low level of capital gains tax, for example, or maintaining job-creating defence budgets). It is hard to fly domestically in the US and not at regular intervals face heavy delays, cancellations or being bumped off your flight. It is also hard not to miss the impressively stoical reaction of most passengers.
Second, most Americans are unaware of how far behind the rest of the world their country has fallen. According to the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness report, US infrastructure ranks below 20th in most of the nine categories, and below 30 for quality of air transport and electricity supply. The US gave birth to the internet the kind of decentralised network that the US power grid desperately needs, yet according to the OECD club of mostly rich nations, average US internet speeds are barely a 10th of those in countries such as South Korea and Germany. In an age where the global IT superhighway is no longer a slogan, this is no joke. The budding US entrepreneur can survive gridlocked traffic, but a slow internet can be crippling.
Third, it may be asking too much of Washington in its present state of polarisation to give the green light to an ambitious infrastructure plan. In a departure from their party’s traditions, many Republicans are now ideologically opposed to any serious federal role in infrastructure and want to decentralise it to the states. It is thus also a stretch to imagine Congress setting up a public infrastructure bank, as President Barack Obama has requested. The bank would use $ 10bn in seed money to leverage a multiple of that in private money for cross-state projects much like the European Investment Bank. The chances are it will stay on the drawing board.
Accraording to the passage, the determining factor for the US’s will to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century is______.
选项
A、federal investment
B、public outrage
C、public awakening
D、bipartisan consensus
答案
A
解析
文中有几个地方可以看出美国基础设施能否得到改造的核心问题。首先,第一段最后一句,“经历了二十余年的投资不足之后,这些基础设施已破败不堪,而美国人也已适应了这种现实。”这里第一次提到了投资。其次,第二段在提到未来的一年可以检验美国是否有改造其基础设施的决心之后,接下来一整段都是在解释美国国会的财政预算和投资问题。再次,在最后一段关于第三个担忧的论述中,作者提到由于两党不能达成共识,国会不能按照奥巴马的要求建立一家公共基础设施银行,也不能时基础设施建设计划进行投资。纵观全文,可见联邦投资是决定能否进行基础设施改造的关键性因素。因此A选项正确。BCD分别是影响美国基础设施能否得到改造的三个重要因素,也是作者担忧的三个方面,但是从根源上来说,都不是其决定性因素。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/7ie7FFFM
0
考研英语一
相关试题推荐
Thepurposeoftheeconomists’researchattheUniversityofIowaistoIftheCDC’smapturnsallred,itmeans
【C1】______wehearmuchaboutthe"newfather",themanwho【C2】______anactiveroleintheday-todaycareofhischildren,ther
Advancesincomputersanddatanetworksinspirevisionsofafuture"informationeconomy"inwhicheveryonewillhave(1)_____t
Whatimpactcanmobilephoneshaveontheirusers’health?Manypeopleworryaboutthesupposedilleffectscausedbyradiation
(46)Today,there’sscarcelyanaspectofourlifethatisn’tbeingupendedbythetorrentofinformationavailableonthehundre
OurculturehascausedmostAmericanstoassumenotonlythatourlanguageisuniversalbutthatthegesturesweuseareunderst
ManycountrieswillnotallowcigaretteadvertisingintheirnewspaperoronTV-especially【1】theadvertisementsareusuallywri
Intermsofliterarydevice,thephrase"analternativesetofprocedures"inthefirstparagraphofthetextisakindof_____
ThePewFoundationdiscoveredinarecent【C1】______thattensionsoverinequalityinwealthnow【C2】______tensionsoverraceandi
随机试题
下列不属于劳动报酬的是()。
Didyoueverhavesomeone’snameonthetipofyourtongueandyetyouwereunabletorecallit?【C1】______thishappensagain,do
偶然性对人们的实践活动只起破坏作用。
有关超速离心机的说法,正确的是
最高最佳使用包括用途、规模、集约度和档次上的最佳、可以帮助确定估价对象最佳用途的经济学原理是()。
建设工程施工合同示范文本中,工程师无权指示设计变更的情形是()。
为鼓励外商向我国转让技术,税法规定,对于在()等方面提供专有技术所取得的使用费,可以减按10%的税率征收所得税。
下列说法正确的是()
城管执法人员为阻止摊贩继续非法占道经营,暂扣了摊贩兜售的物品。这一行为在法律性质上属于()。
在VFP中主索引字段()。
最新回复
(
0
)