曹天啸 博士 新浪微博@老曹考研.doc

曹天啸 博士 新浪微博@老曹考研 心理语言学测试专家，考研英语阅读寻读法创始人、全球ETS题库建设支持高级专家、教育部高等教育司考研命题测试学研究课题组专家成员、北京英语VIP高端辅导支持专家、中国研究生信息网、人民考研版独家撰稿，考研命题测试学专家，历年辅导英语考生以80%以上通过65分而著称考研辅导界。 Passage 1 　　The 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 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 important factor in a market-oriented economy is the mechanism by which consumer demands can be expressed and responded 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 products 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 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 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 profi