2. 建筑工程
  3. [A] Americans’ ability to take the mortg

[A] Americans’ ability to take the mortg

Freeti2020-05-20  40
问题 [A] Americans’ ability to take the mortgage interest deduction ranks up there with the right to bear arms and watch football games. Homeownership is part of the American dream, and the U.S. government has long done its part to encourage home buying among citizens of all economic strata. Economist Edmund Phelps, a 2006 Nobel laureate and Columbia University professor, has criticized the U.S. financial sector’s orientation toward financing residential construction and away from business investment and innovation.　　[B] So, I grew up thinking that renting is perfectly normal. And then, strangely enough, I never did buy a house. I live in New York City and I’m still renting. My own personal narrative shows that it is possible to live a respectable life without ever having owned a home.　　[C] Is the sacrifice of business investment and innovation the key negative to the financial sector’s focus on housing? That was my key negative, but I also had some animus against the idea that everybody ought to own his or her own home. I thought this was a bizarre social goal.　　[D] Haven’t you noted in the past that homeownership can reduce the mobility of a workforce? That’s not true in New York or Los Angeles, where there are so many employers. But if you own your home in Peoria and you’re working for some specialized firm, and things don’t go so well there—at that point, you’d like to have the mobility of picking up stakes at no cost and looking for some similar kind of firm elsewhere. To be perfectly honest, that the other side of the coin is that mobility isn’t necessarily right up there with apple pie as something that’s good for us. Because when people are very mobile, they can be very difficult employees.　　[E] There has been research that shows homeownership makes for better citizens. I can well imagine that some unemployed sociologist would look into that hypothesis. I’m not attacking the idea that people live in conglomerations of houses in proximity to one another, sharing the same water mains and the same newspaper delivery boy and so forth. I’m not objecting to that. That could happen with or without homeownership.　　[F] Is it emotional, as in, part of the American dream? Or has it just been the best way for people to build wealth? We could argue whether or not it’s the best way. But what is surprising is this new ethos, this new enthusiasm for homeownership suggests that it should be—for people who aren’t rich anyway—the main way they hold their wealth and that there’s something almost un-American about holding your wealth in stocks and bonds. The celebration of homeownership seems to be part of a countermovement against popular owning of shares in corporations.　　[G] Of course, I come from more of an urban culture. I grew up, until age 6, in Chicago. My parents rented their apartment and, at the end of the Depression, my parents wanted to replicate that situation. So, again, we lived in a somewhat suburban setting outside of New York City and, again, they rented.　　[H] U.S. government’s improper real estate and financial policies for the crisis paved the way for the seeds. Home Ownership was the American dream. In the 1930s the Great Depression, the United States flagging domestic demand, Roosevelt’s New Deal of the decision-making is one of the establishment of Fannie Mac, to provide for the national housing finance to help people buy housing, to stimulate domestic demand.　　[I] So, will the next economic expansion look very different? I think we very much need to reorient the financial sector away from housing. The level of housing construction was unsustainable. It had to come to a crashing end. But what we have to hope for is that the financial sector will be able to reinvent itself and start learning to serve the classical functions of allocating finance to competing investment project sand competing innovations and activities. I think somehow the banking industry has lost the expertise to be able to choose among rival investment projects and innovation projects. I don’t think the bankers know anything about alternative energy projects. They’re going to have to acquire that expertise if they’re going to be, as the New York Times put it, “useful” to the economy.(此文选自U.S. News & World Report 2008年刊 )　　Order:
选项
答案
解析1. C　本文首段描述了一种社会现象：Homeownership is part of the American dream，然后引用一位诺贝尔获奖者的感言批评美国金融部门倾向于住宅建筑的融资，而远离了商业投资和创新，末句中away from business investment and innovation.与C首句 Is the sacrifice of business investment and innovation the key negative to the financial sector’s focus on housing? 意思联系紧密，其中关键词business investment and innovation反复出现，前后照应；在本段后文，作者回答了此问题并提出自己的看法，引出下文，因此C正确。2. F　上文讲到美国人对房屋所有权情有独钟的社会状况，作者表达了自己的反对意见，根据行文思路，接下来应该解释产生这种现象的原因， E、F都是解释部分，选项F用is it 开头，其中it代词指代上文不定式to own his or her own home，与上文联系更加紧密，因此F正确。误选项[H]，虽提到homeownership是美国梦的一部分, 但该项主要讲美国大萧条与居者有其屋的关系，而本文主要论述的是：是否因为美国金融部门把过多关注点放在了房屋上，而使金融业远离了商业投资和创新的问题，该段是论述原因，所以排除[H]。3. E　上文从美国梦的一部分解释原因，E homeownership makes for better citizens可知，该段继续解释产生这种社会现象的原因，所以E正确。4. B　由上一段可知，作者在讲述自己成长过程中家庭租房的经历，所以B So, I grew up thinking that renting is perfectly normal.，再其成长的过程中认为租房是很正常的现象，承接上文；从结构上来讲，句首so也符合逻辑关系，所以B正确。5. D　由文章最后一段首句So, will the next economic expansion look very different? 中的关联词so 推断，本段与文章结尾部分是因果关系，所以这一段应该是分析人们认同居者有其屋的又一原因，同时作者加以反驳，D提到在过去人们认为拥有住房可以减少劳动力的流动性，然后用That’s not true in New York or Los Angeles对该观点进行了明确的反驳；所以D正确。
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