In some ways

Directions: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following picture. In your essay

The world has more than enough labour

It is difficult for outsiders to gauge people's sense of well-being, simply by viewing their lives. And yet despite the difficulty, economists seem increasingly determined to do just that, by trying to wrestle life's intangibles into measurable data. Forty years after the Gross National Happiness index was invented by the King of Bhutan, happiness is finally gaining attraction as a serious national indicator. Last week, economists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which represents 34 major economies, told a packed auditorium in Paris that they hoped their Better Life Index—launched a year ago—would persuade governments to focus as much on factors like environment and community cohesiveness, as on GDP measurements like productivity and income. "The index of material conditions is still extremely important," the OECD's chief statistician Martine Durand told the audience of about 350 people, including economists and officials from around the world. "But what we are saying is that there is more to life than just money." Now several countries seem to have taken note. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services is working on a national happiness index for Americans (whose "pursuit of happiness," The Washington Post noted, is fundamental to the country) that the U. S. would then track, much as it does income and working hours. And last year, in the midst of massive spending cuts, Britain's Office of National Statistics began a Well-Being Index, at a cost of $ 3 million a year, collecting statistics on people's levels of anxiety and confidence. Surprisingly, the first index showed Brits being generally happy with life, with older people being happiest of all. But no effort seems to match the ambition and scope of the OECD's Better Life Index. Launched in May last year, it collates statistics in 36 countries (Russia and Brazil signed on this month) on 24 indicators; as of this year, those include gender and inequality. There are factors on the list that seem tricky to quantify, like "work-life balance," and "life satisfaction," as well as the more obvious ones like education, health, and income. Having worked for years to design the index, OECD statisticians then confronted the complexities of measuring factors which were subjective and vague. So they launched an online tool called "Your Better Life Index," allowing people anywhere to rank how important each factor on the list is to them, and then compare how their ideal stacks up against real-life statistics. In effect, the Better Life Index is now whatever each person decides it should be. If education is the most important thing to you, go live in Finland, not Mexico; if work-life balance is most important, Denmark is your place, while the U. S. ranks near bottom. By "more to life" (Line 8, Para. 2), Chief statistician Martine Durand suggests ______.

1 Conflicts: If you do get a place in the student dormitory

The end of the early shift

Historians may well look back on the 1980s in the United States as a time of rising affluence side by side with rising poverty. The growth in affluence is attributable to an increase in professional and technical jobs, along with more two career couples whose combined incomes provide a" comfortable living". Yet simultaneously, the nation' s poverty rate rose between 1973 and 1983 from 11.1 percent of the population to 15.2, or by well over a third. Although the poverty rate declined somewhat after 1983, it was still held at 13.5 percent in 1987, comprising a population of 32:5 million Americans. The definition of poverty is a matter of debate. In 1795, a group of English magistrates decided that a minimum in come should be "the cost of a gallon loaf of bread, multiplied by three, plus an allowance for each dependent". Today the Census Bureau defines the threshold of poverty in the United States as the minimum amount of money that families need to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet, assuming they use one third of their income for food. Using this definition, roughly half the American population was poor in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s. By 1950, the proportion of the poor had fallen to 30 percent and by 1964, to 20 percent. With the adoption of the Johnson administration ' s antipoverty programs, the poverty rate dropped to 12 percent in 1969. But since then, it has stopped falling. Liberals contend that the poverty line is too low because it fails to take into account changes in the standard of living. Conservatives say that it is too high because the poor receive other forms of public assistance, including food stamps, public housing subsidies, and health care. In which of the following years did the poor people constitute the largest proportion of the American population?

1 He is one of the truly great war correspondents

What would you rather lose: your house or your car? In America, where a car is usually essential to get to work, many borrowers would sooner lose their house, which explains why in the years after the crisis, mortgages were more likely to go bad than car loans. It also explains why auto loans, unlike mortgages, are booming. New loans reached 371 billion in the year to June, up 7.4% from the previous year and 64% since 2009. Subprime auto loans, made to the riskiest borrowers, have grown even faster, by 93% since 2009. This growth is due to rising car sales and ample credit as banks, finance companies and carmakers' financing arms compete to lend to consumers, either directly or via car dealers. Those loans are then packaged into securities for yield-hungry investors. Experian, a credit-scoring agency, reckons 85% of new and 54% of used cars are now bought with loans, compared to 79% and 52% in 2007. A car loan is a complex transaction that hinges not just on the price of a car, but also on its trade-in value, extras such an extended guarantee or rust proofing, and most important, the interest rate. A dealer typically selects a quote from a bank or finance company via his computer and marks it up. The higher the markup, the greater the payment he receives from the lender. Consumer advocates fret that this process leaves the unsophisticated—as subprime customers tend to be—at the mercy of unscrupulous dealers. They may be charged a higher rate despite qualifying for a lower one, sold unneeded or overpriced extras, or even told, a few days after they drive off with the car, that their loan was turned down and they must pay a higher rate. "None of the prices are fixed, and each unfixed price is a potentially abusive negotiating point," says Tom Domonoske, a lawyer who represents aggrieved buyers. Consumer advocates would like markups replaced with a flat fee. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a new watchdog agency set up after the financial crisis, is also worried that lots of borrowers get a raw deal. It has told banks and finance companies that it holds them responsible for the behaviour of the dealers they work with, and that it considers dealers' discretion over markups an invitation to discrimination. Dealers are fuming at the CFPB's muscle-flexing. Competition, they say, ensures that customers get the best rate; dealers need discretion to compete. By raising costs, stricter regulation may actually reduce the amount of credit available. We can infer from the text that ______.

For the past several years

Jurcik

Whatever happened to the death of newspapers

Does the language we speak determine how healthy and rich we will be? New research by Keith Chen o

In my view

The domestic economy in the United States expanded in a remarkably vigorous and steady fashion. The revival in consumer confidence was reflected in the higher proportion of incomes spent for goods and services and the marked increase in consumer willingness to take on installment debt. A parallel strengthening in business psychology was manifested in a stepped-up rate of plant and equipment spending and a gradual pickup in expenses for inventory. Confidence in the economy was also reflected in the strength of the stock market and in the stability of the bond market. For the year as a whole, consumer and business sentiment benefited from the ease in East-West tensions. The bases of the business expansion were to be found mainly in the stimulative monetary and fiscal policies that had been pursued. Moreover, the restoration of sounder liquidity positions and tighter management control of production efficiency had also helped lay the groundwork for a strong expansion. In addition, the economic policy moves made by the President had served to renew optimism on the business outlook while boosting hopes that inflation would be brought under more effective control. Finally, of course, the economy was able to grow as vigorously as it did because sufficient leeway existed in terms of idle men and machines. The United States balance of payments deficit declined sharply. Nevertheless, by any other test, the deficit remained very large, and there was actually a substantial deterioration in our trade account to a sizable deficit, almost two-thirds of which was with Japan. While the overall trade performance proved disappointing, there are still good reasons for expecting the delayed impact of devaluation to produce in time a significant strengthening in our trade picture. Given the size of the Japanese component of our trade deficit, however, the outcome will depend importantly on the extent of the corrective measures undertaken by Japan. Also important will be our own efforts in the United States to fashion internal policies consistent with an improvement in our external balance. The underlying task of public policy for the year ahead--and indeed for the longer run-- remained a familiar one.- to strike the right balance between encouraging healthy economic growth and avoiding inflationary pressures. With the economy showing sustained and vigorous growth, and with the currency crisis highlighting the need to improve our competitive posture internationally, the emphasis seemed to be shifting to the problem of inflation. The Phase Three program of wage and price restraint can contribute to reducing inflation. Unless productivity growth is unexpectedly large, however, the expansion of real output must eventually begin to slow down to the economy's larger run growth potential if generalized demand pressures on prices are to be avoided. The author mentions increased installment debt in the first paragraph in order to show ______.

Albert Einstein

Though your parents probably meant your name to last a lifetime, remember that the hopes and dreams they cherished when they chose it may not match yours. If your name no longer seems to 1 you, don't despair; you aren't 2 with the label. Screen stars 3 tailor their names, and with some determination, you can, too. Legal rules are more 4 in this matter than you might expect. How many newlyweds, 5 , are aware that no law requires a woman to 6 her husband's name? Not only that, but in most states parents can give their children any name they wish, 7 it's not that of either parent. Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, for example, named their son Tony Garrity. If you do wish to 8 a new name, you don't need an attorney to make the switch official. 9 common law, all that's necessary is to start using the name of your choice. Remember, 10 , that you must use it everywhere-even 11 your mother-for it to become your 12 name. You must also change all your identification papers and 13 . Your Social Security number will remain the same; just fill 14 form SS-5 at your local Social Security office, and they'll 15 the Internal Revenue Service. Be sure to practice your new signature until you write it naturally and 16 Getting friends to call you Leah instead of Lola may be harder than any paperwork 17 , but you'll probably encounter official resistance, too. Be assured that no law should 18 you from using whatever name you've established for any transaction, 19 it's not for purposes of fraud, unfair competition, or to otherwise 20 any illegal activity.

The process by which academics check the work of their colleagues before it goes to print—peer review—is nearly as old as scientific publishing itself. But like every human 1 , it is full of human failing and the process can be 2 in a variety of ways. 3 , and as with many other aspects of publishing, peer review is the 4 of much experimentation. Peer review's current practice took 5 in the middle of the 20th century: authors submit a 6 to a publisher, who then seeks out academics suitable to 7 on it; they then submit critiques anonymously to the authors, who 8 the work to reflect the critiques. The system nearly 9 . The reasons for anonymity are varied, but that information asymmetry often causes trouble, with reviewers shooting 10 rival's work, stealing ideas, or just plain 11 their feet. There are a few green shoots of 12 in the field, though. One idea is to remove the 13 and carry out peer review publicly. Faculty of 1000, an online biology and medicine publisher, has taken this 14 with em>F1000 Research/em>, its flagship journal. 15 it is taking the idea further. Michael Markie, an associate publisher for em>F1000 Research/em>, believes that a 16 to change must also come from authors and reviewers. Mr. Markie 17 a kind of oath and a set of guidelines to encourage even-handed and helpful behaviours for reviewers. All of this may sound a bit 18 . But the truth is that there is no peer-review training. Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief of em>Science/em>, is concerned that some publishers 19 assume that reviewers are aware of an appropriate 20 of conduct. That is not the case, which is why the simple-sounding oath is better than no guidance at all.

Cyberspace, data superhighways

"My expectations and my happiness all got destroyed, that was the minute that it happened." So testified Sony Sulekha, one of the plaintiffs in the largest human-trafficking case ever brought in America. He and around 500 other Indians had been recruited to work in the Signal International shipyard in Mississippi. Each had paid at least $10,000 to a local recruiter working for Signal, expecting a well-paid job and help in getting a green card. Instead they laboured in inhumane conditions, lived in a crowded camp under armed guard and were given highly restricted work permits. Bonded labour is also common in parts of Pakistan, Russia and Uzbekistan—and rife in Thailand's seafood industry. A recent investigation by Verité, an NGO, found that a quarter of all workers in Malaysia's electronics industry were in forced labour. But the focus is now widening to the greater number of people in other forms of bonded labour—and the proposed solutions are changing. Campaign groups and light-touch laws, backed up by the occasional high-profile prosecution, aim to shame multinationals into policing their own supply chains. The Global Fund to End Slavery, which is reported to have substantial seed money from Andrew Forrest, an Australian mining magnate, will seek grants from donor governments and part-fund national strategies developed by public-private partnerships in countries in which bonded labour is common. The Freedom Fund finances research into ways to reduce bonded labour. The Freedom Fund's first schemes include assessments of efforts to free bonded labour in the Thai seafood industry, the clothing industry in southern India and—a harder problem, since the customers are rarely multinationals—in brick kilns in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Arguably, the lack of evidence about what works is the main obstacle to reducing the prevalence of modem slavery. America made human trafficking illegal in 2000, after which it started to publish annual assessments of other countries' efforts to tackle it. But it has only slowly turned up the heat on offenders within its borders. Australia and Britain have recently passed light-touch laws along the lines of a law requiring transparency in supply chains that was adopted by California in 2010. This requires manufacturers and retailers that do business in the state and have global revenues of at least $100m to list the efforts they are taking to eradicate modern slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains. Ending bonded labour will require economic as well as legal measures. Those desperate enough to get into debt for the chance of a job need better options, and long-standing recruitment practices must change. It can be inferred from Paragraph 1 that ______.