考研英语冲刺串讲讲义.pdfVIP

Passage1 The American economic system is organized around a basically private-enterprise, market-orientedeconomyinwhichconsumerslargelydeterminewhatshallbeproducedby spendingtheir money inthe marketplaceforthose goodsand servicesthat 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 importantfactor ina market-orientedeconomy isthe mechanismbywhich consumer demands can be expressed and respondedto by producers. In the American economy, this mechanism is provided bya pricesystem, a process inwhich prices riseandfall in response to relativedemandsofconsumersandsuppliesoffered byseller-producers.Ifthe productsis inshort supply relativeto the demand,the pricewill bebid upand some consumers will be eliminatedfromthe market.If,onthe other hand,producingmoreofacommodity resultsin reducing its cost, this will tend to increase the supply offered by seller-producers, which in turn will lowerthe price and permit moreconsumers to buythe product.Thus, price isthe regulating mechanism inthe 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