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  3. Borrow, Speculate and Hope The National Association

Borrow, Speculate and Hope The National Association

游客2024-12-16  24
问题                         Borrow, Speculate and Hope
    The National Association of Securities Dealers is investigating whether some brokerage houses are inappropriately pushing individuals to borrow large sums on their houses to invest in the stock market. Can we persuade the association to investigate would-be privatizers of Social Security? For it is now apparent that the Bush administration’s privatization proposal will amount to the same thing borrow trillions, put the money in the stock market and hope.
    Privatization would begin by diverting payroll taxes, which pay for current Social Security benefits, into personal investment accounts. The government would have to borrow to make up the shortfall. This would sharply increase the government’s debt. "Nevermind", privatization advocates say, "in the long run, people would make so much on personal accounts that the government could save money by cutting retirees’ benefits."
    Even so, if personal investment accounts were invested in Treasury bonds, this whole process would accomplish precisely nothing. The interest workers would receive on their accounts would exactly match the interest the government would have to pay on its additional debt. To compensate for the initial borrowing, the government would have to cut future benefits so much that workers would gain nothing at all. However, privatizers claim that these investments would make a lot of money and that, in effect, the government, not the workers, would reap most of those gains, because as personal accounts grew, the government could cut benefits.
    We can argue at length about whether the high stock returns such schemes assume are realistic (they aren’t) , but let’s cut to the chase in essence, such schemes involve having the government borrow heavily and put the money in the stock market. That’s because the government would, in effect, rob workers’ gains in their personal accounts by cutting those workers’ benefits.
    Once you realize what privatization really means, it doesn’t sound too responsible, does it? But the details make it considerably worse. First, financial markets would, correctly, treat the reality of huge deficits today as a much more important indicator of the government’s financial health than the mere promise that government could save money by cutting benefits in the distant future. After all, a government bond is a legally binding promise to pay, while a benefits formula that supposedly cuts costs 40 years from now is nothing more than a suggestion to future Congresses. If a privatization plan passed in 2005 called for steep benefit cuts in 2045, what are the odds that those cuts would really happen? Second, a system of personal accounts would pay huge brokerage fees. Of course, from Wall Street’s point of view that’s a benefit, not a cost. [br] It can be inferred from the passage that Social Security privatization will______.
选项 A、provide high returns for the new governments
B、be strongly opposed by Wall Street
C、bring the future retirees more benefits
D、allow individuals to invest in personal accounts
答案 D
解析 本题考查推理引申。有关未来政府的内容只出现在第五段。该段第四句提到，40年后会削减成本的公式无非是对将来国会的一种建议，接着第五句以if假设条件句反问指出，2005年通过的私有化方案让2045年的政府大量削减福利的几率是较小的。由此可见，作者认为私有化提倡者所谓的“长远看会减少政府开支”的观点只是对未来政府的一种空头承诺，新政府未必能从中得到高额回报。[A]项不正确。文章最后一句分析私有化细节时提到，在华尔街看来，经纪费用是收益而非成本，因此华尔街对私有化的态度不应是强烈反对，排除[B]项。[C]项明显错误，因为在这一举措中，将来的退休人员可能是利益受损方。由第二段首句可知私有化方案是将工人支付社会福利金的工资税转移到个人投资账户上，因此[D]项正确。
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