《考研英语核心词汇速成胜经26.docVIP

考研英语核心词汇速成胜经Unit 26 一、真题文章（1994年text 1） The Americaneconomic system is organized around abasicallyprivate-enterprise, market-oriented economy in whichconsumers 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 makeprofits, produce these goods and services in competition with other businessmen; and the profitmotive, operating under competitivepressures, largely determines how these goods and services are produced. Thus, in the American economic system it is the demand ofindividual consumers, coupled with the desire of businessmen tomaximize profits and the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes, that together determine what shall be produced and howresources are used to produce it. An importantfactor in a market-oriented economy is themechanism by which consumer demands can be expressed andresponded 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 supplyrelative to the demand, the price will bebid up and some consumers will beeliminated from the market. If, on the other hand, producing more of acommodityresults 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 ownproductive resources (privateproperty) , 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 propertyembraces not only the ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, in