第四十五篇:(Unit 12,Passage 1)
What most people don’t realize is that wealth isn’t the same as income. If you make $ 1 million a year and spend $ 1 million, you’re not getting wealthier, you’re just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend.
The most successful accumulators of wealth spend far less than they can afford on houses, cars, vacations and entertainment. Why? Because these things offer little or no return. The wealthy would rather put their money into investments or their businesses. It’s an attitude.
Millionaires understand that when you buy a luxury house, you buy a luxury life –style too. Your property taxes skyrocket, along with the cost of utilities and insurance, and the prices of nearby services, such as grocery stores, tend to be higher.
The rich man’s attitude can also be seen in his car. Many drive old unpretentious sedans. Sam Walton, billionaire founder of the Wal – Mart Store, Inc., drove a pickup truck.
Most millionaires measure success by net worth, not income. Instead of taking their money home, they plow as much as they can into their businesses, stock portfolios and other assets. Why? Because the government doesn’t tax wealth; it taxes income you bring home for consumption, the more the government taxes.
The person who piles up net worth fastest tends to put every dollar he can into investments, not consumption. All the while, of course, he’s reinvesting his earnings from investments and watching his net worth soar. That’s the attitude as well.
The best wealth-builders pay careful attention to their money and seek professional advice. Those who spend heavily on cars, boats and buses, I’ve found, tend to skimp on investment advice. Those who skimp on the luxuries are usually more willing to pay top dollar for good legal and financial advice.
The self-made rich develop clear goals for their money. They may wish to retire early, or they may want to leave an estate to their children. The goals vary, but two things are consistent: they have a dollar figure in mind-the amount they want to save by age 50, perhaps – and they work unceasingly toward that goal.
One thing may surprise you. If you make wealth – not just income – your goal, the luxury house you’ve been dreaming about won’t seem so alluring. You’ll have the attitude.
1.Which of the following statements is true?
A.Wealth is judged according to the life style one has.
B.Inheritance builds an important part in one’s wealth.
C.High income may make one live high and get rich t the same time.
D.Wealth is more of what one has made than anything else.
2.By the author’s opinion, those who spend money on luxury houses and cars_____.
A.will not be taxed by the government
B.have accumulated wealth in another sense
C.live high and have little saved
D.can show that they are among the rich
3.The rich put their money into business because_____.
A.they can get much in return to build their wealth
B.they are not interested in luxury houses and cars
C.their goal is to develop their company
D.that is the only way to spend money yet not to be taxed by the government
4.The U.S. government doesn’t tax what you spend money on _____.
A.cars Bhouses C.stock D.boats
5.To become wealthy, one should______.
A.seek as much income as he can
B.work hard unceasingly
C.stick to the way he lives
D.save up his earnings
第45篇答案:DCACB
第46篇:(Unit 12,Passage 2)
It being not only possible but even easy to predict which ten-year-old boys are at greatest risk of growing up to be persistent offenders, what are we doing with the information? Just about the last thing that we should do is to wait until their troubles have escalated in adolescence and then attack them with the provisions of the new Criminal Justice Bill.
If this bill becomes law, magistrates will have the power to impose residential care orders. More young people will be drawn into institutional life when all the evidence shows that this worsens rather than improves their prospects. The introduction of short sharp shocks in detention centers will simply give more young people a taste of something else they don’t need; the whole regime of detention centers is one of toughening delinquents, and if you want to train someone to be anti-establishment, “I can’t think of a better way to do it,” says the writer of this report.
The Cambridge Institute of Criminology comes up with five key factors that are likely to make for delinquency: a low income family a large family, parents deemed by social workers to be bad at raising children, parents who themselves have a criminal record, and low intelligence in the child. Not surprisingly, the factors tend to overlap. Of the 63 boys in the sample who had at least three of them when they were ten, half became juvenile delinquents—compared with only a fifth of the sample as a whole.
Three more factors make the prediction more accurate: being judged troublesome by teachers at the age of ten, having a father with at least two criminal convictions and having another member of the family with a criminal record. Of the 35 men who had at least two of these factors in their background 18 became persistent delinquents and 8 more were in trouble with the law.
Among those key factors, far and away the most important was having a parent with a criminal record, even if that had been acquired in the distant past, even though very few parents did other than condemn delinquent behavior in their children.
The role of the schools emerges as extremely important. The most reliable prediction of all on the futures of boys came from teachers’ ratings of how troublesome they were at the age of ten. If the information is there in the classroom there must be a response that brings more attention to those troublesome children: a search for things to give them credit for other than academic achievement, a refusal to allow them to go on playing truant, and a fostering of ambition and opportunity which should start early in their school careers.
1.According to the author, delinquency should be tackled ___.
A.before adolescence
B.during institutional treatment
C.during adolescence
D.when the problem becomes acute
2.The number of young offenders could be reduced by the way of ___.
A.new legal measures
B.better residential care
C.brief periods of harsh punishment
D.examination of their backgrounds
3.What is the outcome result of putting young offenders into detention centers?
A.They become more violent
B.They receive useful training
C.They become used to institutions
D.They turn against society
4.Ten-year-old children likely to become offenders are usually___.
A.spoilt children from small families.
B.bright children in a poor family.
C.dull children with many brothers and sisters.
D.children whose parents have acquired wealth dishonestly.
5.The writer concludes that potential offenders could be helped by ___.
A.spending more time at school
B.more encouragement at school
C.more activities outside school
D.stricter treatment from teachers
第46篇答案:ADDCB