2015年考研英语阅读理解精选20篇(第十二篇)

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考研英语中阅读理解是重头戏，所占比例较大，考生在复习提高的过程中需要多付出精力。可是对于阅读理解来说，要提高并不是一蹴而就的事情，阅读能力需要日积月累，才能够提高速度和做题的技巧效率。为此，新东方在线小编为广大考生奉上20篇阅读理解，希望大家通过积累来最终提升综合阅读能力。
    下面请看2015年考研英语阅读理解精选20篇(第十二篇)
    贫者、近贫者与你
    Nov. 23rd 2011 | from The New York Times
    What is it like to be poor? Thankfully, most Americans do not know, at
least not firsthand. And times are tough for the middle class. But everyone
needs to rec
    ognize a chilling reality: One in three Americans — 100 million people — is
either poor or perilously close to it.
    The Times’s Jason DeParle, Robert Gebeloff and Sabrina Tavernise reported
recently on Census data showing that 49.1 million Americans are below the
poverty line — in general, $24,343 for a family of four. An additional 51
million are in the next category, which they termed “near poor” — with incomes
less than 50 percent above the poverty line.
    As for all of that inspirational, up-by-their-bootstrap talk you hear on
the Republican campaign trail, over half of the near poor in the new tally
actually fell into that group from higher income levels as their resources were
sapped by medical expenses, taxes, work-related costs and other unavoidable
outlays.
    The worst downturn since the Great Depression is only part of the problem.
Before that, living standards were already being eroded by stagnating wages and
tax and economic policies that favored the wealthy.
    Conservative politicians and analysts are spouting their usual denial. Gov.
Rick Perry and Representative Michele Bachmann have called for taxing the poor
and near poor more heavily, on the false grounds that they have been getting a
free ride. In fact, low-income workers do pay up, if not in federal income
taxes, then in payroll taxes and state and local taxes.
    Asked about the new census data, Robert Rector, an analyst at the
conservative Heritage Foundation told The Times that the “emotionally charged
terms ‘poor’ or ‘near poor’ clearly suggest to most people a level of material
hardship that doesn’t exist.” Heritage has its own, very different ranking
system, based on households’ “amenities.” According to that, the typical poor
household has roughly 14 of 30 amenities. In other words, how hard can things be
if you have a refrigerator, air-conditioner, coffee maker, cellphone, and other
stuff?
    The rankings ignore the fact that many of these are requisites of modern
life and that things increasingly out of reach for the poor and near poor —
education, health care, child care, housing and utilities — are the true
determinants of a good, upwardly mobile life.
    Government surveys analyzed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
indicate that in 2010, just over half of the country’s nearly 17 million poor
children, lived in households that reported at least one of four major
hardships: hunger, overcrowding, failure to pay the rent or mortgage on time or
failure to seek needed medical care. A good education is also increasingly out
of reach. A study by Martha Bailey, an economics professor at the University of
Michigan, showed that the difference in college-graduation rates between the
rich and poor has widened by more than 50 percent since the 1990s.
    There is also a growing out-of-sight-out-of-mind problem. A study, by Sean
Reardon, a sociologist at Stanford, shows that Americans are increasingly living
in areas that are either poor or affluent. The isolation of the prosperous, he
said, threatens their support for public schools, parks, mass transit and other
investments that benefit broader society.
    The poor do without and the near poor, at best, live from paycheck to
paycheck. Most Americans don’t know what that is like, but unless the nation
reverses direction, more are going to find out.
    付出会有回报，提高需要努力，小编希望每一位决定了考研的考生都能够坚定自己的目标，并为实现目标努力奋斗，坚持不懈，只有这样才能收获丰厚的果实。2015年考研圆梦，大家一起努力。
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