北京外国语大学1999年基础英语试题1.docVIP

北京外国语大学1999年基础英语试题 Part One Read the following and be prepared to answer questions: Hewlett-Packard Co. is aprimary engine of the Information Age economy. In 1997, it sold $43 billion worth of desktop computers, printers and other products on the global market, and the company reached a value of almost $70 billion on Wall Street. That year, Hewlett-Packard paid $25 million in compensation to its chairman, president and chief executive officer, Lewis H. Platt, and his three deputies. Hewlett- Packard also compensates the men and the women who clean the offices of Platt, his deputies and every-one else. The company does not actually hire janitors; rather, it hires companies that hire janitors. Every year, Hewlett-Packard contracts with a variety of temporary-employment agencies for the services of hundreds of broom-pushers and mop-wielders. These temporary employees are paid between $6.20 and 9.93 per hour, or roughly $15,000 a year. The disparity illustrates the slightly dirty little secret of the world’s most dazzling industry. As the Information Age economy booms, the gap between the nation’s poorest and richest workers is widening-and this gap is occurring not in spite of the Information Age, but in part because of it. A survey of economists by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York attributed a stunning 45 percent of the widening wage gap nationwide to technology, with the remainder split between the erosion of the minimum wage (10 per cent), international trade (12 per cent), the decline in unionization (10 per cent), immigration (8 per cent) and other (15 per cent). Adjusted for inflation, the incomes of the poorest fifth of working families dropped by 21 percent between 1979 and 1995, while the incomes of the richest fifth jumped by 30 per cent during the same time period. This gap has been growing in good times as well as bad , although indications are that it’s been leveling off in recent months. According to the 1997 Economic Report of the President, the wag