填空题 Directions: Read the following text and answer questions by finding a subtitle for each of the marked parts or paragraphs. There are two extra items in the subtitles. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.
A. Importance of pursuing happiness
B. Capitalism, a double-edged sword
C. The modification of the traditional criterion
D. The thing that cannot be attained
E. The wave of the emerging notion
F. A paradox in question
G. The unparalleled economic growth
Having grown at an annual rate of 3.2% per head since 2000, the world economy is over half way towards catching up with its best decade ever. If it keeps going at this speed, it will beat both the supposedly perfect 1950s and the 1960s. Market capitalism, the engine that runs most of the world economy, seems to be doing its job well.
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But is it? Once upon a time, that job was generally agreed to be to make people better off. Nowadays that's not so clear. A number of economists, in search of big problems to solve, and politicians, looking for bold promises to make, think that it ought to be doing something else: making people happy.
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The view that economics should be about more than money is widely held in continental Europe. In debates with Anglo-American capitalists, sly extravagant nobles have tended to cite the idea of "quality of life" to excuse slower economic growth. But now David Cameron, the latest leader of Britain's once rather materialistic Conservative Party, has upheld the notion of "general well-being" (GWB) as an alternative to more traditional GDP. In America, meanwhile, inequality, overwork and other hidden costs of prosperity were much discussed in the mid-term elections; and "wellness" (as opposed to health) has become a huge industry, catering especially to the prosperous discontent of the baby-boomers.
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Much of this draws on the upstart science of happiness, which mixes psychology with economics. Its adherents start with abundant survey data, such as those derived from the simple, folksy question put to thousands of Americans every year or two since 1972:"Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy or not too happy?" Some of the results are unsurprising: the rich report being happier than do the poor. But a paradox emerges that requires explanation: affluent countries have not got much happier as they have grown richer. From America to Japan, figures for wellbeing have barely changed.
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The science of happiness offers two explanations for the paradox. Capitalism, it notes, is good at turning luxuries into necessities—bringing to the masses what the elites have always enjoyed. But the flip side of this genius is that people come to take for granted things they once desired from afar. Frills (不实用的装饰) they never thought they could have become essentials that they cannot do without. People are stuck on a monotonous lifestyle: as they achieve a better standard of living, they become accustomed to its pleasures.
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Capitalism's ability to take things downmarket also has its limits. Many of the things people most prize—such as the top jobs, the best education, or an exclusive home address—are luxuries by necessity. An elite schooling, for example, ceases to be so if it is provided to everyone. These "positional goods", as they are called, are in fixed supply: you can enjoy them only if others do not. The amount of money and effort required to grab them depends on how much your rivals are putting in.