【正文】 he following passage.It used to be that people were proud to work for the same pany for the whole of their working lives. They‘d get a gold watch at the end of their productive years and a dinner featuring speeches by their bosses praising their loyalty/But today‘s rich capitalists have regressed (倒退) to the ―survival of the fittest‖ ideas and their loyalty extends not to their workers or even to their stockholders but only to themselves. Instead of giving out gold watches worth a hundred or so dollars for forty or so years of work, they grab tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars as they sell for their own profit the pany they may have been with for only a few years.The new rich selfishly act on their own to unfairly grab the wealth that the country as a whole has produced. The top l percent of the population now has wealth equal to the whole bottom 95 percent and they want more. Their selfishness is most shamelessly expressed in downsizing and outsourcing (將產(chǎn)品包給外公司做) because these business maneuvers don‘t act to create new jobs as the founders of new industries used to do, but only to cut out jobs while keeping the money value of what those jobs produced for themselves.To keep the money machine working smoothly the rich have bought all the politicians from the top down. The president himself is constantly leaving Washington and the business of the nation because he is summoned to ―fundraising dinners‖ where fat cats pay a thousand or so dollars a plate to worm their way into government not through service but through donations of vast amounts of money. Once on the inside they have both political parties busily tearing up all the regulations that protect the rest of us from the greed of the rich.The middle class used to be loyal to the free enterprise system. In the past, the people of the middle class mostly thought they‘d be rich themselves someday or have a good shot at being rich. But nowadays ine is being distributed more and more unevenly and corporate loyalty is a thing of the past. The middle class may also wake up to forget its loyalty to the socalled free enterprise system altogether and the government which governs only the rest of us while letting the corporations do what they please with our jobs. As things stand, if somebody doesn‘t wake up, 2 the middle class is on a path to being downsized all the way to the bottom of society.21. It can be inferred form the first paragraph that people used to place a high value on _________.A) job securityB) bosses‘ praiseC) corporate loyaltyD) retirement benefits 22. The author is strongly critical of today‘s rich capitalists for _________.A) not giving necessary assistance to laidoff workersB) maximizing their profits at the expense of workersC) not setting up longterm goals for their paniesD) rewarding only those who are considered the fittest 23. The immediate consequence of the new capitalists‘ practice is ________ .A) loss of corporate reputationB) lower pay for the employeesC) a higher rate of unemploymentD) a decline in business transactions 24. The rich try to sway the policy of the government by ________ .A) occupying important positions in both political partiesB) making monetary contributions to decisionmakersC) pleasing the public with generous donationsD) constantly hosting fundraising dinners 35. What is the author‘s purpose in writing this passage?A) To call on the middle class to remain loyal to the free enterprise system.B) To warn the government of the shrinking of the American middle class.C) To persuade the government to change its current economic policies.D) To urge the middle class to wake up and protect their own interests.cbcbd 3. Passage Two ()Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage. Some futurologists have assumed that the vast upsurge (劇增) of women in the workforce may portend a rejection of marriage. Many women, according to this hypothesis, would rather work than marry. The converse (反面) of this concern is that the prospects of being a multipaycheck household could encourage marriages. In the past, only the earnings and financial prospects of the man counted in the marriage decision. Now, however, the earning ability of a woman can make her more attractive as a marriage partner. Data show that economic