1994年全国硕研究生入学统一考试英语试.docVIP

1994年全国硕士研究生入学统一考试英语试 Part Ⅲ Reading ComprehensionPassage IThe 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 eoonomic system it is the demand of individual consumers , coupled with the desire of businessmen to maximize profits and the desire of individu - als 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 de- mands can be expressed and responded to by producers. In the American economy, this mecha- nism is provided bv 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 tum will lower the price and permit more consumers to buy the product. Thus, price is the regulating mechanism in the Amer- ican economic system .The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are allowed to own productive resources private propeny , 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 pro