2 . Directions：Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. necessity	B. threat	C. neighbouring	D. adjusted
E. unlikely	F. decline	G. cooperated	H. questions
I. profitable	J. imposing	K. gains

New York and New Tax

According to a Manhattan Institute survey, more than half of high-earning New Yorkers are working entirely from home and 44% are considering leaving the city. Ned Lamont, Connecticut’s governor, has said “the old idea of the commuter(通勤者) going into New York City five days a week may be outdated.” It does seem     1     that the tens of thousands commuting from Mr. Lamont’s state will continue to do so. The region’s governors have     2     well together to deal with the pandemic(流行病), but the friendliness may soon end over taxes.

When people from     3     states like New Jersey and Connecticut commute to New York to work for a New York-based employer, they must pay New York tax on the related earned income. Even those who work from home must pay New York taxes unless the employee is working outside New York by     4    .

Taxpayers and those states are looking closely at this loophole(漏洞). In December, Connecticut and New Jersey applied to the Supreme Court to consider a case which     5     a state’s authority to tax non-residents’ income while they are working remotely. They think this is definitely a(n)     6     to the city’s finances. “Firms have considered leaving the city before, and employees are gradually accepting the idea. They have been working remotely for almost ten months and they’ve     7     to that idea.”

Companies are also watching the progression of the billionaire Mark to Market Tax Act, which would treat capital     8     from billionaires’ property as taxable income. New York’s Democratic governor said he would reject any laws     9     heavy taxes on the rich, because it would drive out wealthy, mobile residents. It would not take too many moving trucks for the city to feel the economic loss, says Michael Hendrix. A 5%     10     of New Yorkers making about $10,000 would result in an annual loss of $933m—roughly the amount distributed to the city’s health department.

3 . Financial regulations in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of big banks. Starting next year, any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10 years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing. The main purpose of this “clawback” rule is to hold bankers responsible for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institution. Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit: more long-term decision-making not only by banks but also by all corporations, to build a stronger economy for future generations.

“Short-termism” or the desire for quick profits, has worsened in publicly traded companies, says the Bank of England’s top economist, Andrew Haldane. He quotes a giant of classical economies, Alfred Marshall, in describing this financial impatience as acting like “Children who pick the strawberries out of their pudding to eat them at once” rather than putting them aside to be eaten last.

The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain, he notes, has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades. Transient(短期的) investors, who demand high quarterly profits from companies, can hold back a firm’s efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty. This has been called “quarterly capitalism”.

In addition, new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities( 股 票 ), quicker use of information, and thus shortens attention spans in financial markets. “There seems to be an advantage of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing,” said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in speech this week.

In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to delay performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year, slightly helping reduce “short-termism.” In its latest survey of CEO pay, The Wall Street Journal finds that “a substantial part” of executive pay is now tied to performance.

Much more could be done to encourage “long-termism,” such as changes in the tax code and quicker disclosure(披露) of stock acquisitions. In France, shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company.

Within companies, the right compensation design can provide motivation for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all shareholders. Britain’s new rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interest in their performance, not just for the short term but for the long term.

1. According to Paragraph 1, one reason for imposing the new rule is the _______.

A．enhance banker’s sense of responsibility

B．help corporations achieve larger profits

C．build a new system of financial regulation

D．guarantee the bonuses of top executives

2. It is argued that the influence of transient investment on public companies can be _______.

A．indirect	B．negative
C．favorable	D．temporary

3. The US and France examples in paragraphs 5 and 6 are used to illustrate_______.

A．the obstacles to preventing “short-termism”.

B．the significance of long-term thinking.

C．the approaches to promoting “long-termism”

D．the popularity of short-term thinking.

4. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A．Failure of Quarterly Capitalism

B．Patience as a Corporate Virtue

C．Decisiveness Required of Top Executives

D．Frustration of Risk-taking Bankers

4 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

Minimum wage laws in the U.S. were first introduced during the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. This period was     1     by falling output, falling prices, and falling employment. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933 attempted to stop this downward trend by encouraging the     2     of trade association agreements that established the lowest price and minimum wages. This was the first time that minimum wages were introduced in major industries. But in 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the NIRA was unlawful, and these initial minimum wage agreements came to an end.

In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established a national minimum wage of $0.25 an hour. This Act     3     only applied to a relatively small share of the labor force, but has been     4     over time so that it now applies to about 90% of all nonsupervisory workers.

Introductory economies textbooks usually first introduce the minimum wage as an application of demand and supply analysis. This starting discussion is usually based on the following     5    : the labor market is perfectly competitive, the minimum wage covers all workers, and worker productivity is     6     by the wage rate.

While minimum wage increases generally receive     7     public support, economists have generally argued that such laws will result in an increase in the unemployment rate in low-wage labor markets.

An issue related to that of a minimum wage is a growing movement for a “living wage”.Living wage proposals suggest that the     8     minimum wage is too low to allow families to be above the poverty level. Now,     9     of this view support “living wage laws” that require the local government to only accept contracts from firms that pay their workers a wage that is high enough to     10     the worker above the poverty line. Under Baltimore’s “living wage” requirement, firms must pay a worker an hourly wage that will allow a full-time worker to receive an annual income greater than or equal to the poverty level for a family of three.

5 . The Supreme Court’s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeds to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.

Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of “double effects”, a centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects----a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen---is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect.

Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of morphine to control terminally ill patients’ pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient.

Nancy Dubler, director of Montefiore Medical Center, contends that the principle will shield doctors who "until now have very, very strongly insisted that they could not give patients sufficient medication to control their pain if that might hasten death."

George Annas, chair of the health law department at Boston University, maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It's like surgery, " he says. “We don't call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn't intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you're a physician, you can risk your patient's suicide as long as you don't intend their suicide."

On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for whom modern medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying.

Just three weeks before the Court's ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the undertreatment of pain and the aggressive use of "ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twin problems of end-of-life care.

The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life.

Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiatives translate into better care. “Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering,” to the extent that it constitutes “systematic patient abuse.” He says medical licensing boards “must make it clear ... that painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension.”

1. From the first three paragraphs, we learn that_____________

A．doctors used to increase drug dosages to control their patients' pain.

B．it is still illegal for doctors to help the dying end their lives.

C．the Supreme Court strongly opposes physician-assisted suicide.

D．patients have no constitutional right to commit suicide.

2. Which of the following statements is true according to the text?

A．Doctors will be held guilty if they risk their patients' death.

B．Modern medicine has assisted terminally ill patients in painless recovery.

C．The Court ruled that high-dosage pain-relieving medication can be prescribed.

D．A doctor's medication is no longer justified by his intentions.

3. Which of the following best defines the word “aggressive" (line 3, paragraph 7 ) ?

A．Bold.

B．Harmful.

C．Careless.

D．Desperate.

4. George Annas would probably agree that doctors should be punished if they __________.

A．manage their patients incompetently

B．give patients more medicine than needed

C．reduce drug dosages for their patients

D．prolong the needless suffering of the patients

6 . We all know that some things are obviously right. For example, it is right to be _______ to other people. It is also right to look after the environment. Some things are_______ wrong, too. For instance, we should not hurt or bully (欺负) others, nor should we litter. Rules often tell us what is right or wrong.

Rules can help the public make the right _______, and remain safe. Car drivers have to obey traffic regulations that tell them the right things to do on the road to avoid crashes. Cyclists who give signals before turning or stopping help prevent_______.

If people follow rules without taking other matters into consideration, it will be _______for them to form what is sometimes called a “black and white” view. For example, they may believe that people should always tell the truth, and that lying is_______ acceptable. Such people always stick to their views, even if it means that they may get into_______.

Sometimes it may not be so easy to know_______what is right or wrong. Some people choose not to eat meat because they believe that it is _______ to eat animals, but others argue that they can eat meat and ________ be kind to animals; some insist that stealing is always wrong, but others think that one does not need to feel to________ when stealing some food to eat, if lives in a really poor area and he is________ . Rules help us live together in harmony, because they show us the right way to________ other. However, some people argue that rules may be ________, having observed that rules change all the time, and that some schools have some regulations and other have different ones — so who is to ________what is right?

1.

A．kind

B．sensitive

C．fair

D．generous

2.

A．equally

B．slightly

C．clearly

D．increasingly

3.

A．suggestion

B．conclusions

C．turns

D．choices

4.

A．accidents

B．mistakes

C．falls

D．deaths

5.

A．interesting

B．vital

C．easy

D．valuable

6.

A．seldom

B．rarely

C．merely

D．never

7.

A．trouble

B．power

C．prison

D．control

8.

A．roughly

B．eventually

C．deliberately

D．exactly

9.

A．awful

B．cruel

C．unhealthy

D．unnecessary

10.

A．still

B．even

C．later

D．somehow

11.

A．nervous

B．anxious

C．afraid

D．guilty

12.

A．begging

B．starving

C．growing

D．wandering

13.

A．follow

B．instruct

C．treat

D．protect

14.

A．disgusting

B．confusing

C．unsafe

D．unimportant

15.

A．predict

B．explain

C．decide

D．consider