Determining the most effective way to deter deliberate crimes, such as fraud, as opposed to impulsive crimes, such as crimes of passion , is a problem currently being debated in the legal community. On one side of the debate aye those scholars who believe that deliberate crimes are a product of the influence of societal norms and institutions on individuals. These scholars suggest that changing people"s beliefs about crime, increasing the access of the most economically alienated individuals to economic institutions, and rehabilitating those convicted of this type of crime will reduce the crime rate. On the other side are those legal scholars who believe that the decision to commit a deliberate crime is primarily the result of individual choice. They suggest that increasing the fines and penalties associated with criminal activity, along with efficacious law enforcement is the best deterrence method. However, some recent legal scholarship has changed the nature of this debate by introducing an economic principle that shows that these two positions, far from being antithetical, are surprisingly complementary. The economic principle that reconciles the two positions is that of utility maximization, which holds that, given a choice of actions, rational individuals will choose the action that maximizes their anticipated overall satisfaction, or expected utility. The expected utility of an action is ascertained by determining the utilities of the possible outcomes of that action, weighing them according to the likelihood of each outcome"s coming to pass, and then adding up those weighted utilities. Using this economic framework, an individual"s decision to commit a crime can be analyzed as a rational economic choice. According to the utility maximization principle a person who responds rationally to economic incentives or disincentives will commit a crime if the expected utility from doing so, given the chance of getting caught, exceeds the expected utility from activity that is lawful. Within this framework the two crime-deterrence methods have the same overall effect. For instance, the recommendations on one side of the crime deterrence debate to increase penalties for crimes and strengthen law enforcement result in an increased likelihood of detection and punishment and impose an increased cost to the individual if detected and punished. This lowers the expected utility from criminal activity, thereby making a person less likely to choose to commit a deliberate crime. The recommendations on the other side of the debate, such as increasing the economic opportunities of individuals most alienated from economic institutions, also affect the utility equation. All else being equal, these types of policies will effectively increase the expected utility from lawful activity. This economic analysis demonstrates that the two positions are not fundamentally in conflict and that the optimal approach to crime deterrence would include elements of both deterrence strategies.

Certain functions must be performed in every city.【F1】 Law and order must be maintained; there must be some regulation of building to ensure a minimum of safety and to ensure that houses or workshops are not constructed on public land or in improper places; there must be regular methods of preventing, controlling, and extinguishing fires; and there must be regulations and executive action to protect the health of the citizens. The services now provided by city governments are different in nature and wider in scope than in the past.【F2】 Generalization is impossible, but the most widespread functions today are the environmental and personal health services, including clinics and hospitals; primary, secondary, and further education; water supply, sewage, refuse collection and disposal; construction, maintenance, and lighting of streets; public housing; welfare services for the old, destitute, physically and mentally handicapped, orphans and abandoned children, unemployed and disabled workers, and other categories needing help; cemeteries and crematoriums; markets and abattoirs . The traditional services have been transformed beyond recognition. 【F3】 A group of public-utility services comprising the supply of gas, electricity, water, and public transport are frequently provided by the city government itself, by a public corporation closely connected with it, or by a commercial company operating under a concession granted by the municipality . In some countries, municipal enterprise in the public utility field has been supplanted by larger regional or national schemes. A city council inevitably takes an interest in the economic well-being of the city that it governs. Every city government wishes to assist industry and promote trade, but there are great differences in the role assigned to local authorities in this respect in different countries. In the former Communist regimes of eastern Europe, nearly the whole of local trade and much local industry was directly or indirectly under the control of the city government. On the other hand, in the United States a city government can control local industry only by means of zoning regulations, restrictions imposed under public health legislation, and so forth.【F4】 In any case, municipal governments can do much to assist industry and commerce by good planning and physical development, by providing for trade fairs and exhibition centres, and by designing and developing roads, public housing, schools, and other municipal services to meet the needs of employers and employees. 【F5】 The attraction of tourists also has become an almost universal goal of every city that has the slightest pretension to be of interest to visitors, and here too the municipality can do much to attract tourists by providing not only publicity and information but also convenient and agreeable facilities.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about Amazonia. Choose the most suitable heading from the list for each numbered paragraph. The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.A. Assumed inhospitableness to social developmentB. Price paid for misconceptionsC. Evolutionary adaptation to forest ecologyD. False believes revisedE. Extreme impoverishment and backwardnessF. Ignorance of early human impact In 1942 Allan R Holmberg, a doctoral student in anthropology from Yale University, USA, ventured deep into the jungle of Bolivian Amazonia and searched out an isolated band of Siriono Indians. The researcher described the primitive society as a desperate struggle for survival, a view of Amazonia being fundamentally reconsidered today. (41)______. The Siriono, Holmberg wrote, led a "strikingly backward" existence. Their villages were little more than clusters of thatched huts. Life itself was a perpetual and punishing search for food: some families grew manioc and other starchy crops in small garden plots cleared from the forest, while other members of the tribe scoured the country for small game and promising fish holes. When local resources became depleted, the tribe moved on. As for technology, Holmberg noted, the Siriono "may be classified among the most handicapped peoples of the world". Other than bows, arrows and crude digging sticks, the only tools the Siriono seemed to possess were "two machetes worn to the size of pocket-knives". (42)______. Although the lives of the Siriono have changed in the intervening decades, the image of them as Stone Age relics has endured. To casual observers, as well as to influential natural scientists and regional planners, the luxuriant forests of Amazonia seem ageless, unconquerable, a habitat totally hostile to human civilization. The apparent simplicity of Indian ways of life has been judged an evolutionary adaptation to forest ecology, living proof that Amazonia could not—and cannot—sustain a more complex society. Archaeological traces of far more elaborate cultures have been dismissed as the ruins of invaders from outside the region, abandoned to decay in the uncompromising tropical environment. (43)______. The popular conception of Amazonia and its native residents would be enormously consequential if it were true. But the human history of Amazonia in the past 11,000 years betrays that view as myth. Evidence gathered in recent years from anthropology and archaeology indicates that the region has supported a series of indigenous cultures for eleven thousand years; an extensive network of complex societies—some with populations perhaps as large as 100,000—thrived there for more than 1,000 years before the arrival of Europeans. Far from being evolutionarily retarded, prehistoric Amazonian people developed technologies and cultures that were advanced for their time. If the lives of Indians today seem "primitive", the appearance is not the result of some environmental adaptation or ecological barrier; rather it is a comparatively recent adaptation to centuries of economic and political pressure. (44)______. The evidence for a revised view of Amazonia will take many people by surprise. Ecologists have assumed that tropical ecosystems were shaped entirely by natural forces and they have focused their research on habitats they believe have escaped human influence. But as the University of Florida ecologist, Peter Feinsinger, has noted, an approach that leaves people out of the equation is no longer tenable. The archaeological evidence shows that the natural history of Amazonia is to a surprising extent tied to the activities of its prehistoric inhabitants. (45)______. The realization comes none too soon. In June 1992 political and environmental leaders from across the world met in Rio de Janeiro to discuss how developing countries can advance their economies without destroying their natural resources. The challenge is especially difficult in Amazonia. Because the tropical forest has been depicted as ecologically unfit for large-scale human occupation, some environmentalists have opposed development of any kind. Ironically, one major casualty of that extreme position has been the environment itself. While policy makers struggle to define and implement appropriate legislation, development of the most destructive kind has continued apace over vast areas. The other major casualty of the "naturalism" of environmental scientists has been the indigenous Amazonians, whose habits of hunting, fishing, and slash-and-burn cultivation often have been represented as harmful to the habitat. In the clash between environmentalists and developers, the Indians have suffered the most. The new understanding of the pre-history of Amazonia, however, points toward a middle ground. Archaeology makes clear that with judicious management selected parts of the region could support more people than anyone thought before. The long-buried past, it seems, offers hope for the future.

【F1】 This is supposed to be an enlightened age, but you wouldn't think so if only you could hear what the average man thinks of the average woman. Women won their independence years ago. After a long, bitter struggle, they now enjoy the same educational opportunities as men in most parts of the world. They have proved repeatedly that they are equal and often superior to men in almost every field. The hard-fought battle for recognition has been won, but it is through no means over.【F2】 It is men, not women who still carry on the sex war because their attitude remains basically hostile, even in the most progressive societies, women continue to be regarded as second-rate citizens. To hear some men talk, you'd think that women belonged to a different species! On the surface, the comments made through men about women's abilities seem light-hearted. The same tired jokes about women drivers are repeated day in and day out. This apparent light hearted ness does not conceal the real contempt that men feel for women. However much men sneer at women, their claims to superiority are not borne out through statistics. Let's consider the matter of driving, for instance. We all know that women cause far fewer accidents than men. They are too conscientious and responsible to drive like maniacs. But this is a minor quibble. Women have succeeded in any job you care to name.【F3】 As politicians, soldiers, doctors, factory hands, university professors, farmers, company directors, lawyers, bus-conductors, scientists and presidents of countries they have often put men to shame. And we must remember that they frequently succeed brilliantly in all these fields in addition to bearing and rearing children. Yet men go on maintaining the fiction that there are many jobs women can not do.【F4】 Top level political negotiation between countries, business and banking are almost entirely controlled through men, who jealously guard their so-called "rights". Even in otherwise enlightened places like Switzerland women haven teven been given the vote. This situation is preposterous! The truth is that men cling to their supremacy because of their basic inferiority complex. They shun real competition. They know in their hearts that women are superior and they are afraid of being beaten at their own game. One of the most important tasks in the world is to achieve peace between the nations.【F5】 You can be sure that if only women were allowed to sit round the conference table, they would succeed brilliantly, as they always do, where men have failed for centuries.

Humanity"s greatest accomplishment of the past five decades, declared Bill Gates this week, is the reduction in the number of deaths among young children by half, to 10 million a year in 2007.The world"s most successful capitalist heaped praise on the World Health Organization (WHO), while unveiling an ambitious new global scheme to eliminate polio within a few years. For hispart, the agency"s top polio man, Bruce Aylward, described the fight against the disease in the language of markets: "Elimination is the venture capital of public health: the risks are huge but so too are the rewards." The use of this sort of language captures a change in public health in the past decade. The Gates Foundation, with its pots of money and businesslike approach, has transformed the bureaucratic and disheartened world of public health. It has helped revive ailing campaigns, including the fight against polio. This will now get a fresh $600m-plus, from British and German taxpayers, from the Rotary Club International, as well as from the Gates Foundation ($255m). The decline from 350,000 new cases in 1988 (when the goal of rapid polio eradication was first declared) to 2,000 cases now (chiefly in Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan) looks like a near victory. But the final stretch is the hardest. Only one in 200 cases is readily vulnerable to early detection (as opposed to most victims of smallpox—a serious infectious disease that causes spots which leave deep marks on the skin, already eliminated). Polio is also far more infectious. Other obstacles are that the usual vaccine has not worked well in densely populated, disease-ridden central India. Researchers are now trying to find a vaccine that fits those conditions better. Neal Halsey, of Johns Hopkins University, says the "live" vaccines used commonly today must be backed up with further doses of "inactivated" vaccines. These need to become cheaper. The fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan has hampered vaccination programs there. So have rumors among Muslims in northern Nigeria that the vaccination program was in fact a conspiracy to sterilize children That allowed the polio virus to strengthen and spread. The Nigerian strain may have now reached a dozen other countries. The final push towards elimination will certainly be costly, though several recent studies suggest that it is cheaper to spend money on a big elimination effort now than to pay the price later for sustained vigilance and health costs. The prospect of a global revival is concentrating minds. That is why, despite the daunting challenges and potential donor fatigue, the world may end up making a go of elimination this time.

In the early 1960s Wilt Chamberlain was one of only three players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) listed at over seven feet. If he had played last season, however, he would have been one of 42. The bodies playing major professional sports have changed dramatically over the years, and managers have been more than willing to adjust team uniforms to fit the growing numbers of bigger, longer frames. The trend in sports, though, may be obscuring an unrecognized reality: Americans have generally stopped growing. Though typically about two inches taller now than 140 years ago, today"s people—especially those born to families who have lived in the U.S. for many generations—apparently reached their limit in the early 1960s. And they aren"t likely to get any taller. "In the general population today, at this genetic, environmental level, we"ve pretty much gone as far as we can go," says anthropologist William Cameron Chumlea of Wright State University. In the case of NBA players, their increase in height appears to result from the increasingly common practice of recruiting players from all over the world. Growth, which rarely continues beyond the age of 20, demands calories and nutrients—notably, protein—to feed expanding tissues. At the start of the 20th century, under-nutrition and childhood infections got in the way. But as diet and health improved, children and adolescents have, on average, increased in height by about an inch and a half every 20 years, a pattern known as the secular trend in height. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, average height—5 "9" for men, 5"4" for women—hasn "t really changed since 1960.Genetically speaking, there are advantages to avoiding substantial height. During childbirth, larger babies have more difficulty passing through the birth canal. Moreover, even though humans have been upright for millions of years, our feet and back continue to struggle with bipedal posture and cannot easily withstand repeated strain imposed by oversize limbs. "There are some real constraints that are set by the genetic architecture of the individual organism," says anthropologist William Leonard of Northwestern University. Genetic maximums can change, but don"t expect this to happen soon. Claire C. Gordon, senior anthropologist at the Army Research Center in Natick, Mass, ensures that 90 percent of the uniforms and workstations fit recruits without alteration. She says that, unlike those for basketball, the length of military uniforms has not changed for some time. And if you need to predict human height in the near future to design a piece of equipment, Gordon says that by and large, "you could use today"s data and feel fairly confident."

In the United States, the first day nursery, was opened in 1854. Nurseries were established in various areas during the【C1】______half of the 19th century; most of【C2】______were charitable. Both in Europe and in the U.S., the day nursery movement received great【C3】______during the First World War, when【C4】______of manpower caused the industrial employment of unprecedented numbers of women. In some European countries nurseries were established【C5】______in munitions plants, under direct government sponsorship.【C6】______the number of nurseries in the U.S. also rose【C7】______, this rise was accomplished without government aid of any kind. During the years following the First World War,【C8】______, federal State and local governments gradually began to exercise a measure of control【C9】______the day nurseries, chiefly by【C10】______them and by inspecting and regulating the conditions within the nurseries. The【C11】______of the Second World War was quickly followed by an increase in the number of day nurseries in almost all countries, as women were【C12】______called up on to replace men in the factories. On this【C13】______the U.S. government immediately came to the support of the nursery schools,【C14】______$6,000,000 in July, 1942, for a nursery school program for the children of working mothers. Many States and local communities【C15】______this Federal aid. By the end of the war, in August, 1945, more than 100,000 children were being cared【C16】______in daycare centers receiving Federal【C17】______. Soon afterward, the Federal government【C18】______cut down its expenditures for this purpose and later【C19】______them, causing a sharp drop in the number of nursery schools in operation. However, the expectation that most employed mothers would leave their【C20】______at the end of the war was only partly fulfilled.

Your friend caught a bad cold. You get the news and decide to write a letter to show your care. You have to write the following things:1. say sorry for the news;2. give advice;3. persuade him to see the doctor.you should write about 100 words, do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Matin" instead. You do not need to write the address.

When the public demands "law and order" and when newspapers editorials talk about the "rising tide of crime", they have in mind mostly street crime committed by the poor. Even the massive report of the President"s Crime Commission, the Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, devoted only two pages to the entire subject of white-collar offenders and business crimes. The deep concern with street crimes is understandable. Unlike a swindler, who merely takes the victim"s money, an armed mugger threatens physical injury and even death. (46) Yet the fact remains that a great deal of crime in American society—perhaps most crime, and certainly the most costly crime is committed by respectable middle-class and upper-class citizens. The term "white-collar crime" was first used by Edwin Sutherland in an address to the American Sociological Association in 1939. (47) "White-collar crime," he declared, "may be defined approximately as a crime committed by a person of respectability and high status in the course of his occupation." Sutherland documented the existence of this form of crime with a study of the careers of 70 large, reputable corporations, which together had committed 980 violations of the criminal law, or an average of 14 convictions apiece. Behind the offenses of false advertising, unfair labor practices, restraint of trade, price-fixing agreements, stock manipulation, copyright infringement, and outright swindles, were perfectly respectable middle-class executives. (48) Sociologists now use the term "white-collar crime" to refer not only to crimes committed in the course of business activities for corporate benefit but also to crimes, such as embezzlement, typically committed by persons of high status for personal benefits. As Sutherland pointed out, the full extent of white-collar crime is difficult to assess. Many corporate malpractices go undetected, and many wealthy people are able to commit crimes like expense-account fraud for years without being found out. (49) More important, white-collar crimes are usually regarded as somehow less serious than the crimes of the lower class, and they attract less attention from police and prosecutors. Even the victims may be unwilling to prosecute because of the offender"s "standing in the community" and would rather out of court. A company that finds its safe has been burgled in the night will immediately summon the police, but it might not do so if it finds that one of its executives has embezzled some of its funds. (50) To avoid unwelcome publicity, the company officials may simply allow the offender to resign after making an arrangement to repay the missing money.

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyonANSWERSHEET2.(20points)

Suppose you have found something wrong with the electronic dictionary that you bought from an online store the other day. Write an email to the customer service center to 1) make a complaint, and 2) demand a prompt solution. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address. (10 points)

Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayofabout160—200words.Youressaymustbewrittenclearlyandshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1.Describethedrawingandinterpretitsmeaning,2.Andpointoutitsimplicationsinourlife.

Arguing from the view that humans are different from animals in every relevant respect, extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral choice.

Over half the world"s people now live in cities. The latest "Global Report on Human Settlements" says a significant change took place last year. The report【C1】______this week from U.N. Habitat, a United Nations agency. A century ago, 【C2】______than five percent of all people lived in cities. 【C3】______ the middle of this century it could be seventy percent, or【C4】______six and a half billion people. Already three-fourths of people in【C5】______countries live in cities. Now most urban population 【C6】______is in the developing world. Urbanization can【C7】______to social and economic progress, but also put【C8】______on cities to provide housing and 【C9】______. The new report says almost two hundred thousand people move【C10】______cities and towns each day. It says worsening inequalities,【C11】______by social divisions and differences in【C12】______ , could result in violence and crime【C13】______ cities plan better. Another issue is urban sprawl. This is where cities【C14】______quickly into rural areas, sometimes【C15】______a much faster rate than urban population growth. Sprawl is【C16】______ in the United States. Americans move a lot. In a recent study, Art Hall at the University of Kansas found that people are moving away from the【C17】______cities to smaller ones. He sees a 【C18】______toward "de-urbanization" across the nation.【C19】______urban economies still provide many【C20】______ that rural areas do not.

In the days before preschool academies were all but mandatory for kids under 5, I stayed home and got my early education from Mike Douglas. His TV talk show was one of my mother"s favorite programs, and because I looked up to my mother, it became one of my favorites too. Yet I quickly developed my own fascination with Douglas, who died last week. Maybe it was the plain set—a couple of chairs and little else—or maybe it was the sound of people talking about ideas and events rather than telling stories. Whatever it was, to my 4-year-old mind it was all terribly adult, like my mother"s morning coffee. It was—relatively. The grown-up world I live in now is another matter. Thanks in part to the proliferation and polarization of talk shows in the last 20 years or so—the generation after Douglas and his big-tent gentility went off the air—public conversations have become scary monsters indeed. Like other forms of entertainment, the programming of commercial talk shows today has moved beyond niche to hermetic. The idea of a host booking guests as varied as Jerry Rubin, Malcolm X and Richard Nixon—and treating them all with a certain deference, as Douglas did—is unheard of. Equally a-mazing is to consider that Douglas was a moderate; though he didn"t always share his guests" views, he nonetheless insisted on everybody having his or her say. What he did, in other words, was more important than who he was. That was probably an easy dictate for an old-school, modest guy such as Douglas to follow. And now? Oprah Winfrey is sincere e-nough, but her viewership is a cult of personality, not of people or issues. Like her contemporaries, O-prah chooses her guests and issues to suit her show, rather than allowing guests and issues to be the show. She prefers uplift and empowerment, which is more palatable than name-calling, the hallmark of Bill O"Reilly or Howard Stem. But spin is spin, and in her own way Oprah gets as tiresome as those guys. Ultimately, these shows fail to convey the fullness of the conversation, the sense that America is one place—or one host—with many voices at equal volume. That doesn"t mean everybody"s right. But to have everybody engaged and feeling a stake in the outcome of the discussion is priceless. Engagement is nothing less than national security: I felt that as a preschooler, watching Mike Douglas on TV, and I feel it now. The age of irony, they would say, fueled by information that moves at the speed of light, demands a different approach.

Writeanessayof160—200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawing,2)interpretitsmeaning,and3)giveyourcommentonit.Youshouldwriteneatly.(20points)

BSection III Writing/B

Joseph Rykwert entered his field when post-war modernist architecture was coming under fire for its alienating embodiment of outmoded social ideals. Think of the UN building in New York, the city of Brasilia, the UNESCO building in Paris, the blocks of housing "projects" throughout the world. These tall, uniform boxes are set back from the street, isolated by windswept plazas. They look inward to their own functions, presenting no "face" to the inhabitants of the city, no "place" for social interaction. For Mr. Rykwert, who rejects the functionalist spirit of the Athens Charter of 1933, a manifesto for much post-war building, such facelessness destroys the human meaning of the city. Architectural form should not rigidly follow function, but ought to reflect the needs of the social body it represents. Like other forms of representation, architecture is the embodiment of the decisions that go into its making, not the result of impersonal forces, market or history. Therefore, says Mr. Rykwert, adapting Joseph de Maistre"s dictum that a nation has the government it deserves, our cities have the faces they deserve. In this book, Mr. Rykwert. a noted urban historian of anthropological love, offers a flaneur"s approach to the city"s exterior surface rather than an urban history from the conceptual inside out. He does not drive, so his interaction with the city affords him a warts-and-all view with a sensual grasp of what it is to be a "place". His story of urbanization begins, not surprisingly, with the industrial revolution when populations shifted and increased, exacerbating problems of housing and crime. In the 19th century many planning programs and utopias (Ebenezer Howard"s garden city and Charles Fourier"s "phalansteries" among them) were proposed as remedies. These have left their mark on 20th-century cities, as did Baron Hausmann"s boulevards in Paris, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc"s and Owen Jones"s arguments for historical style, and Adolf Loos"s fateful turn-of-the-century call to abolish ornament which, in turn, inspired Le Corbusier"s bare functionalism. The reader will recognize all these ideas in the surfaces of the cities that hosted them: New York, Paris, London, and Vienna. Cities changed again after the Second World War as populations grew, technology raced and prosperity spread. Like it or not, today"s cities are the muddled product, among other things, of speed, greed, outmoded social agendas and ill-suited postmodern aesthetics. Some lament the old city"s death; others welcome its replacement by the electronically driven "global village". Mr. Rykwert has his worries, to be sure, but he does not see ruin or chaos everywhere. He defends the city as a human and social necessity. In Chandigarh, Canberra and New York he sees overall success; in New Delhi, Paris and Shanghai, large areas of falling. For Mr. Rykwert, a man on foot in the age of speeding virtual, good architecture may still show us a face where flaneurs can read the story of their urban setting in familiar metaphors.

Give the Senate some credit: in shaping the current immigration-reform bill, it has come up with one idea that almost everybody hates. That"s the plan to create a new class of "guest workers"—immigrants who would be allowed to work in the U.S. for three two-year stretches, at most, provided that they return home for a year after each visit. Conservatives dislike the plan because they believe that the guest workers won"t return home after their visas expire. Liberals dislike it because they believe the program will depress American wages and trap guest workers in a state of serfdom. The only vocal supporters of the provision are businesses that rely heavily on immigrant labor, and they"re presumably just looking out for themselves. With the broader concerns about the effects of illegal immigration, the hostility to the new plan is understandable. It"s also misguided. However imperfect, the guest-worker program is better than any politically viable alternative. Opponents of immigration sometimes imply that adding workers to a workforce automatically brings wages down. But immigrants tend to work in different industries than native workers, and have different skills, and so they often end up complementing native workers, rather than competing with them. That can make native workers more productive and therefore better off. According to a recent study by the economists Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, between 1990 and 2004 immigration actually boosted the wages of most American workers; its only negative effect was a small one, on the wages of workers without a high-school diploma. And if by increasing the number of legal guest workers we reduced the number of undocumented workers, the economy would benefit even more. Guest workers are also, paradoxically, less likely than illegal immigrants to become permanent residents. The U.S. already has a number of smaller—and less well-designed—temporary-worker programs, and there"s no evidence that workers in those plans routinely overstay their visas. One remarkable study found that after border enforcement was stepped up in 1993 the chances of an illegal immigrant returning to his homeland to stay fell by a third. In fact, whatever benefits the guest-worker program brought to the U.S. economy or to particular businesses, the biggest winners would be the workers themselves. Congress, of course, is under no obligation to care about foreign workers. But the program"s costs to American workers are negligible, the gains for the guest workers are enormous, and the U.S. economy will benefit. This is that rare option which is both sensible and politically possible.

For Tony Blair, home is a messy sort of place, where the prime minister"s job is not to uphold eternal values but to force through some unpopular changes that may make the country work a bit better. The area where this is most obvious, and where it matters most, is the public services. Mr. Blair faces a difficulty here which is partly of his own making. By focusing his last election campaign on the need to improve hospitals, schools, transport and policing, he built up expectations. Mr. Blair has said many times that reforms in the way the public services work need to go alongside increases in cash. Mr. Blair has made his task harder by committing a classic negotiating error. Instead of extracting concessions from the other side before promising his own, he has pledged himself to higher spending on public services without getting a commitment to change from the unions. Why, given that this pledge has been made, should the health unions give ground in return? In a speech on March 20th, Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, said that "the something-for-nothing days are over in our public services and there can be no blank cheques." But the government already seems to have given health workers a blank cheque. Nor are other ministries conveying quite the same message as the treasury. On March 19th, John Hutton, a health minister, announced that cleaners and catering staff in new privately-funded hospitals working for the National Health service will still be government employees, entitled to the same pay and conditions as other health-service workers. Since one of the main ways in which the government hopes to reform the public sector is by using private providers, and since one of the main ways in which private providers are likely to be able to save money is by cutting labor costs, this move seems to undermine the government"s strategy. Now the government faces its hardest fight. The police need reforming more than any other public service. Half of them, for instance, retire early, at a cost of ＆1 billion a year to the taxpayer. The police have voted 10-1 against proposals from the home secretary, David Blunkett, to reform their working practices. This is a fight the government has to win. If the police get away with it, other public service workers will reckon they can too. And, if they all get away it, Mr. Blair"s domestic policy——which is what voters are most likely to judge him on a the next election——will be a failure.