考研英语阅读命题思路透析和真题揭秘(38)

The American economic system is organized around a basically private-enterprise, market-oriented economy in which consumers largely determine what shall be produced by spending their money in the marketplace for those goods and services that they want most. Private businessmen, striving to make profits, produce these goods and services in competition with other businessmen; and the profit motive, operating under competitive pressures, largely determines how these goods and services are produced. Thus, in the American economic system it is the demand of individual consumers, coupled with the desire of businessmen to maximize profits and the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes, that together determine what shall be produced and how resources are used to produce it.

An important factor in a market-oriented economy is the mechanism by which consumer demands can be expressed and responded to by producers. In the American economy, this mechanism is provided by a price system, a process in which prices rise and fall in response to relative demands of consumers and supplies offered by seller-producers. If the product is in short supply relative to the demand, the price will be bid up and some consumers will be eliminated from the market. If, on the other hand, producing more of a commodity results in reducing its cost, this will tend to increase the supply offered by seller-producers, which in turn will lower the price and permit more consumers to buy the product. Thus, price is the regulating mechanism in the American economic system.

The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are allowed to own productive resources (private property), and they are permitted to hire labor, gain control over natural resources, and produce goods and services for sale at a profit. In the American economy, the concept of private property embraces not only the ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, including the right to determine the price of a product or to make a free contract with another private individual.

53. According to the passage, a private-enterprise economy is characterized by__.
[A] private property and rights concerned
[B] manpower and natural resources control
[C] ownership of productive resources
[D] free contracts and prices

[答案] A

[解题思路]

本文第三段第一句话指出"The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are allowed to own productive resources (private property) , and they are permitted to hire labor, gain control over natural resources, and produce goods and services for sale at a profit"（私有企业经济的一个重要因素是允许个人拥有生产资料（私有财产），允许他们雇佣劳动力，控制自然资源，通过生产产品、提供服务来获取利润），第二句话进一步指出"In the American economy, the concept of private property embraces not only the ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, including the right to determine the price of a product or to make a free contract with another private individual"（在美国经济中，私有财产的概念不仅包括生产资料的所有权，也包括一定的其它权利，比如，产品价格的决定权或与其他私有个体的自由签约权），这说明了private property包含了两个方面。而四个选项中只有A选项包含了这两个方面，因此A是正确答案。

[题目译文]

根据这篇文章，私有企业经济的特征是          。
[A] 私有财产和相关的权利
[B] 人力和自然资源的控制
[C] 生产资料所有权
[D] 自由合同与价格