The American【C1】 1system, is organized around a basically private-enterprise, market-oriented economy in which【C2】 2largely determine what shall be produced by spending their money in the marketplace for those goods and services that they want most. Private businessmen,【C3】 3to make profits, produce these goods and services in【C4】 4with 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,【C5】 5with the desire of businessmen to【C6】 6profits and the desire of individual 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【C7】 7by 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【C8】 8to relative demands of consumers and supplies offered by seller-producers. If the product is in【C9】 9supply 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 turn will lower the price and permit more consumers to buy the product. Thus, price is the【C10】 10mechanism in the American economic system.
A) competition B) maximize C) short D) coupled
E) individual F) response G) eliminated H) private
I) economic J) striving K) regulating L) mechanism
M) consumers N) political O) results 【C1】