单选题
The American economic system is organized around a
basically private-enterprise, market-oriented economy in which consumers largely
determine what shall be produced by spending their money in the marketplace for
those goods and services that they want most. Private businessmen, striving to
make profits, produce these goods and services in competition with other
businessmen; and the profit motive, operating under competitive pressures,
largely determines how these goods and services are produced. Thus, in the
American economic system it is the demand of individual consumers, coupled with
the desire of businessmen to maximize profits and the desire of individuals to
maximize their incomes, that together determine what shall be produced and how
resources are used to produce it. An important factor in a
market-oriented economy is the mechanism by which consumer demands can be
expressed and responded to by producers. In the American economy, this mechanism
is provided by a price system, a process in which prices rise and fall in
response to relative demands of consumers and supplies offered by
seller-producers. If the product is in short supply relative to the demand, the
price will be bid up and some consumers will be eliminated from the market. If,
on the other hand, producing more of a commodity results in reducing its cost,
this will tend to increase the supply offered by seller-producers, which in trun
will lower the price and permit more consumers to buy the product. Thus, price
is the regulating mechanism in the American economic system.
The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are
allowed to own productive resources(private property), and they are permitted to
hire labor, gain control over natural resources, and produce goods and services
for sale at a profit. In the American economy, the concept of private property
embraces not only the ownership of productive resourcs but also certain rights,
including the right to determine the price of a product or to make a free
contract with another private individual.
单选题
According to the text, the American economic system only cares for
______.
A. the consumers' interests
B. the businessmen's interests
C. the government's interests
D. both A and B
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】
单选题
The word "motive" (Para. 1, Line 6) probably means ______.
A. action
B. desire
C. service
D. process
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】
单选题
We learn from the text that ______.
A. supply and demand regulate prices
B. producers can satisfy the consumers by mechanized production
C. consumers can convey their demands through producers
D. businessmen decide the prices of products
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】
单选题
The text indicates that the feature of a private-enterprise economy is
______.