英语二 2013阅读理解真题-text1.docx

TEXT 1In an essay（短文） entitled “Making It in America”, the author Adam Davidson relates(叙述) a joke from cotton（棉） about just how much a modern textile（纺织品） mill（工厂） has been automated: The average（普通） mill only two employees today,” a man and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines.” Davidson’s article is one of a number of pieces that have recently appeared（出现） making the point that the reason we have such stubbornly（顽固的，顽强的） high unemployment and declining（衰退中的） middle-class（中层社会的，中产阶级的;） incomes today is also because of the advances in both globalization（全球化） and the information technology revolution,（全球化与信息技术革命的进展） which are more rapidly （很快地，迅速地）than ever replacing labor with machines or foreign worker. In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle ,But ,today ,average is officially over（平常/普通已经结束）. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access（获取、使用） to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation （自动化）and cheap genius（才能）. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra-their unique（唯一的，独特的） value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. But there’s been an acceleration（加速）. As Davidson notes,” In the 10 years ending in 2009, [U.S.] factories shed（解雇、脱落） workers so fast that they erased（解雇，抹去） almost all the gains（获得，增加） of the previous（以前的，早先的） 70 years; roughly（大概的） one out of every three manufacturing（制造业的，工业） jobs-about 6 million in total -disappeared. There will always be changed-new jobs, new products, new services. But the one thing we know for sure is that with each advance in globalization and the I.T. revolution, the best jobs will require workers to have more and better education to make themselves above average. In a world wh