考研英语经济学人文章阅读训练三十五

Cloth of gold一块价值堪比黄金的布Why the economic value of a face mask is$56.14为什么说一个口罩的经济价值是56.14美元After a brutal first six months of the year,governments across the world are hoping for an economic bounce-back.Rich-world GDP fell by about 10%in the first half of2020.在经历今年上半年的残酷考验后，世界各国政府都期待经济能够触底反弹。

2020年上半年，发达国家的GDP下降了约10%。

Yet much has changed since—including that more people are now wearing masks.Economists,obsessed with translating everything into GDP,wonder if more widespread face-covering could help the recovery.然而，自从越来越多的人戴上口罩后，情况发生了显著变化。

经济学家痴迷于用GDP来解释一切事物，如今他们想知道，随着更多的人戴上了口罩，经济能否走向复苏。

The thinking goes that masks can,in part,substitute for lockdowns. People wearing them need not be discouraged as much from using public transport.More shops and offices might be able to reopen,albeit while practising social distancing.这种想法基于这样一个逻辑，戴口罩在一定程度上可以代替封锁措施。

Diageo last week took a majority stake in Seedlip, a non-alcoholic spirit sold as an alternative to gin — a move seen by analysts as the drinks giant’s attempt to grab more of the growing teetotal market. The young are more abstemious than their elders, and manufacturers and marketers need to keep up.帝亚吉欧(Diageo)不久前收购了Seedlip的多数股权，这是一种被作为金酒替代品出售的无酒精型烈酒——市场分析师们将此举解读为酒业巨头试图在日益扩张的无酒精饮料市场中分一杯羹。

年轻一代相对于他们的长辈在饮酒方面更加节制，酒类生产商和营销机构必须跟上这种趋势。

For those of us who don’t drink or, in my case, only occasionally, a reduction in others’ drinking, along with a fall in the antisocial consequences, is a welcome development. At a wedding in Italy this summer, I marvelled as a group of Italian and French guests partied under a hot afternoon sun and late into the night, without anyone staggering or slurring in the way they would inevitably have done in the UK.对于我们当中那些不喝酒——或者以我自己为例——仅偶尔喝一杯的人来说，他人饮酒量的下降，以及与之相随的危害社会公共利益问题的减少，是一种令人愉快的新变化。

The Guardian view on unaffordable homes: building injustice into the economy《卫报》关于难以负担的住房的观点：在经济中制造不公The average wage of the top 1% in Britain rose to £13,770 a month in December. Jeevun Sandher, an economist at King’s College London, points out the very richest saw their incomes rise the fastest during the pandemic. This group were also likely to have been able to save the most while Covid raged. Where do the very wealthiest spend their cash? One place is housing, for which there is a low level of stock being released on to the market. The result is rising house prices. Over the past 12 months, asking prices have gone up by 9.5%.12月，英国最富有的1%人群的平均工资上升至每月13770英镑。

伦敦国王学院的经济学家桑德尔指出，在疫情期间，最富有的人的收入增长最快。

在新冠病毒肆虐期间，这一群体也可能是能够存最多钱的人。

最富有的人把钱花在哪里？其中一个地方就是住房，因为住房市场上的存量很低。

结果就是房价上涨。

在过去12个月里，住房要价上涨了9.5%。

This has a knock-on effect for renters. UK rents rose by 8.3% in the last three months of 2021. For would-be first-time buyers, the situation is as bad if not worse, with the current average price of £277,000 nearly £25,000 higher than just a year ago. Those looking to have a roof to live under will find little solace in official figures. These record an 11% drop in the number of total homes added in 2021 compared with the year before. The number of new affordable houses that began being built dropped 16% year-on-year. Shortages of labour and materials, as well as planning delays, will make it harder for the 11th Tory housing minister since 2010 to meet government targets for new homes.这对租客产生了连锁反应。

A global house-price slump is coming全球房价即将暴跌It won’t blow up the financial system, but it will be scary虽然不会摧毁金融体系，但仍然令人恐慌Over the past decade owning a house has meant easy money. Prices rose reliably for years and then went bizarrely ballistic in the pandemic. Yet today if your wealth is tied up in bricks and mortar it is time to get nervous.过去十年里，拥有一套房就意味着轻松赚钱。

房价多年来一直稳步上涨，甚至在疫情期间还异乎寻常地飙升了。

然而现如今，如果你的财富被套牢在房产上，那你应该感到紧张了。

House prices are now falling in nine rich economies. The drops in America are small so far, but in the wildest markets they are already dramatic. In condo-crazed Canada homes cost 9% less than they did in February.九个发达经济体的房价都在下跌。

到目前为止，美国房价的跌幅还不大，但最疯狂的市场的房价跌幅已经非常大了。

在热衷于共管公寓的加拿大，房价较今年2月下跌了9%。

As inflation and recession stalk the world a deepening correction is likely—even estate agents are gloomy. Although this will not detonate global banks as in 2007-09, it will intensify the downturn, leave a cohort of people with wrecked finances and start a political storm.随着通货膨胀和经济衰退的风险在全球范围内蔓延，房价或将迎来一场深度调整——甚至房地产经纪人也对此感到悲观。

（考研英语阅读原文很多来自《经济学人》，希望大家好好看看)印度的救赎IN MAY America’s Federal Reserve hinted that it would soon start to reduce its vast purchases of Treasury bonds. As global investors adjusted to a world without ultra—cheap money, there has been a great sucking of funds from emerging markets。

Currencies and shares have tumbled, from Brazil to Indonesia, but one country has been particularly badly hit。

今年五月，美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve）暗示，它将很快开始缩减大量购买国债的规模。

随着全球投资者开始调整策略，以适应没有超廉价资金的世界，大量资金开始逃离新兴市场.从巴西到印度尼西亚，货币及股票纷纷暴跌，但有一个国家受创尤其严重.Not so long ago India was celebrated as an economic miracle. In 2008 Manmohan Singh，the prime minister，said growth of 8—9% was India’s new cruising speed. He even predicted the end of the “chronic poverty，ignorance and disease, which has been the fate of millions of our countrymen for centuries”. Today he admits the outlook is difficult. The rupee has tumbled by 13% in three months。

One afternoon in April 2020, I took an old bamboo rod out of my shed and cut it to a length of 115cm. Stood on the ground, it came about halfway up my chest. I laid it on a scrubby patch of our garden on the island of Aegina, in Greece: one end next to a tough-looking dandelion, the other pointed northwards. Then I dug up the dandelion with a trowel and replanted it at the other end of the stick. A small step for humans, but quite the leap for the dandelion.2020年4月的一个下午，我从棚子里拿出一根旧竹竿，把它切成了115厘米的长度。

立在地上，它的长度大概是到我胸部高度的一半。

我把它搁在花园中的一小片灌木丛生的土地上，花园位于希腊的埃吉纳岛（Aegina）上。

竹竿的一端挨着一株看上去很强韧的蒲公英，另一端朝着北方。

随后我用泥铲把蒲公英挖了出来，再把它重新种进竹竿另一端的土里。

对人类来说，这是一小步的距离，但对蒲公英而言却是一次不小的跃进。

This 115cm corresponds to a particular measurement. It is the present average velocity of climate change — how fast the effects of global heating are moving across the surface of the planet — and thus represents the speed we need to move in order for the conditions around us to stay the same. It also implies a direction: the bubble habitats where different forms of life can survive and thrive are moving uphill, and towards the poles.这115厘米所对应的是一个特定的尺寸。

Research suggests happy employees are good for firms and investors 研究表明，快乐的员工对公司和投资者都有好处There is an old joke about a new arrival in Hell,who is given the choice by Satan of two different working environments.In the first,frazzled workers shovel huge piles of coal into a fiery furnace.In the second,a group of workers stand,waist-deep in sewage,sipping cups of tea.有个老笑话讲的是一个刚下地狱的人，撒旦让他在两种不同的工作环境中做出选择。

在第一个房间里，疲惫不堪的工人们要将大堆大堆的煤铲进炽热的火炉中。

在第二个房间里，一群工人站在齐腰深的污水中，啜饮着茶。

The condemned man opts,on balance,for the second room.As soon as the door closes,the foreman shouts“Right lads,tea break over.Time to stand on your heads again.”这个有罪之人在经过权衡后最终选择了第二个房间。

门一关上，工头便喊道：“伙计们，茶歇时间到了，是时候再倒立了。

”Terrible working conditions have a long tradition.Early industry was marked by its dirty,dangerous factories(dark,satanic mills).In the early 20th century workers were forced into dull,repetitive tasks by the needs of the production line.However,in a service-based economy,it makes sense that focusing on worker morale might be a much more fruitful approach.恶劣的工作环境有着悠久的传统。

Springtime lethargy – is something entirely natural春困——一种很自然的现象Spring fatigue, also known as spring lethargy, refers to a state of fatigue, lowered energy, or depression, associated with the onset of spring.春困是指一种与春天的到来有关的疲劳、精力下降或抑郁的状态。

Such a state may be caused by a normal reaction to warmer temperatures, or it may have a medical basis, such as allergies or "reverse" seasonal affective disorder. Although the causes of this springtime lethargy have not yet been fully resolved, hormone balance may play a role.这种状态可能是对对气温升高的正常反应，也可能是一种医学上的反应，如过敏或“逆向”季节性情感障碍等。

人们至今尚未完全弄清楚春困发生的原因，但荷尔蒙平衡可能是原因之一。

According to this hypothesis, the body's reserves of the "happiness hormone" serotonin, whose production depends on daylight, become exhausted over the winter, making it especially easy for the "sleep hormone" melatonin to have its effect.根据这一假说，人体储存的“快乐荷尔蒙”血清素（其产生依赖于日光）在冬季会被消耗殆尽，这使得“睡眠荷尔蒙”褪黑激素特别容易发挥作用。

Why Do Trucks Use Diesel Fuel Instead of Gasoline?为什么卡车要烧柴油而不是汽油?Putting diesel in your regular gas-guzzling automobile isn’t just a waste of money—it can also cause some problems for your car. For semis and other trucks, however, diesel is just what the doctor (or mechanic, rather) ordered. And that’s because those types of vehicles typically have diesel engines, rather than gasoline engines.往你那烧汽油的车里加柴油不仅浪费钱，而且还会给你的汽车带来一些问题。

然而，对于半挂车和其他卡车来说，柴油就是医生（或者说机械师）开的处方。

这是因为这些类型的车辆通常使用柴油发动机，而非汽油发动机。

One big difference between the two engines is how they turn fuel into energy. According to Engineering Explained, gas engines usually use a spark plug to ignite the mixture of fuel and air in the cylinder.这两种发动机之间最大的区别就是将燃料转化为动能的方式。

根据《汽车机械小百科》的解释，汽油发动机通常使用火花塞来点燃气缸内燃料和空气的混合物。

But diesel engines compress the air until it reaches a high enough temperature that the fuel will ignite as soon as it gets injected into the cylinder. In order to heat the air to that point, a diesel engine needs an especially high compression ratio: the cylinder’s volume when the piston is at its highest point compared to the volume when the piston is at its lowest point.而柴油发动机会压缩空气，直到空气达到足够高的温度，燃料一进入气缸就会点燃。

Britain’s young face a poorer future英国年轻一代面临更加贫穷的未来Economic statistics will never fully capture the extent of the sacrifices of Britain’s youth during the pandemic. For a generation of students and pupils it was a lost chance to make friends, explore who they are and, gradually, become adults — as well as to learn, in person. In the face of the deaths in the broader population, it is easy to dismiss as frivolous the setbacks of those who missed partying, travelling and dating during the long months stuck inside but these are still years of carefree youth they will not get back. What is more, most of these privations were primarily to protect those from older generations, the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.经济统计数字将永远不能完全反映出英国青年在这场大流行病中牺牲了多少。

对于这一代学生来说，他们失去了结交朋友、探索自我并逐渐成长为人,以及亲身学习的机会。

在有人死于新冠疫情之际，我们很容易认为被困在室内长达数月而错过聚会、旅行和约会的人所经历的这些挫折无关痛痒，但这是他们再也无法重返的无忧无虑的青春时光。