题目内容:
1[阅读题,10分] You hear the refrain all the time: the U.S. economy looks good statistically, but it doesn’t feel good. Why doesn’t ever-greater wealth promote ever-greater happiness? It is a question that dates at least to the appearance in 1958 of The Affluent (富裕的) Society by John Kenneth Galbraith, who died recently at 97. The Affluent Society is a modern classic because it helped define a new moment in the human condition. For most of history, “hunger, sickness, and cold” threatened nearly everyone, Galbraith wrote. “Poverty was found everywhere in that world. Obviously it is not of ours.” After World War II, the dread of another Great Depression gave way to an economic boom. In the 1930s unemployment had averaged 18.2 percent; in the 1950s it was 4.5 percent. To Galbraith, materialism had gone mad and would breed discontent. Through advertising, companies conditioned consumers to buy things they didn’t really want or need. Because so much spending was artificial, it would be unfulfilling. Meanwhile, government spending that would make everyone better off was being cut down because people instinctively—and wrongly—labeled government only as “a necessary evil.” It’s often said that only the rich are getting ahead; everyone else is standing still or falling behind. Well, there are many undeserving rich—overpaid chief executives, for instance. But over any meaningful period, most
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