研友網·3月21晚·屠皓民老师直播·YY讲义.docVIP

研友网·YY课堂四六级免费课程之阅读理解 屠皓民 @屠屠老师 Passage One Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage. Age has its privileges in America, and one of the more prominent of them is the senior citizen discount. Anyone who has reached a certain age—in some case as low as 55—is automatically entitled to a dazzling array of price reductions at nearly every level of commercial life. Eligibility is determined not by one’s need but by the date on one’s birth certificate. Practically unheard of a generation ago, the discounts have become a routine part of many businesses-as common as color televisions in motel rooms and free coffee on airlines. People with gray hair often are given the discounts without even asking for them; yet, millions of Americans above age 60 are healthy and solvent（有支付能力的）. Business that would never dare offer discounts to college students or anyone under 30 freely offer them to older Americans. The practice is acceptable because of the widespread belief that “elderly” and “needy” are synonymous（同义的）. Perhaps that once was true, but today elderly Americans as a group have a lower poverty rate than the rest of the population. To be sure, there is economic diversity within the elderly, and many older Americans are poor. But most of them aren’t. It is impossible to determine the impact of the discounts on individual companies. For many firms, they are a stimulus to revenue. But in other cases the discounts are given at the expense, directly or indirectly, of younger Americans. Moreover, they are a direct irritant in what some politicians and scholars see as a coming conflict between the generations. Generational tensions are being fueled by continuing debate over Social Security benefits, which mostly involves a transfer of resources from the young to the old. Employment is another sore point. Buoyed（支持） by laws and court decisions, more and more older Americans are declining the retirement dinner in favor of staying on the job—thereby lessening employment and