Section BDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by som

Section B

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.

Movie directors sometimes shoot two endings to a film, undecided about which to use until the very last minute. In the Casablanca everyone knows, Ingrid Bergman leaves Humphrey Bogart, but in another ending Bogart got the girl.

In some ways, it feels like we're in the middle of a movie made by some deranged(疯狂的) economist, and we don't know yet if we're going to get the happy ending or the sad one. Does the rise of China and India supercharge(提高) global growth, or will all the new competition pull down wages in the industrialized world？ Is this period going to be titled The Bright Dawn or The Big Squeeze？

Certainly for workers in the industrialized world, the latest Signs are troubling. Profits seem to be outpacing wages just about everywhere. As a result, from Japan to the US to Europe, labor is getting a smaller share of the economic pie. The numbers are pretty straightforward: In Japan, the share of national income going to workers dropped from 53.1% in 2001 to 51.1% in the year ending with the first quarter of 2005. In the U.S., the employee share of gross domestic income dropped from 58% to 56.8%. In Western Europe, workers' share of national income dropped from 51.7% in 2001 to 50.5% at the end of 2004, before bouncing up a bit in the latest quarter.

An obvious—and pessimistic—explanation for this broad decline is the intensification of global competition, forcing formerly privileged workers in advanced countries to accept a lower standard of living. Harvard economist Richard Freeman has argued that the entry of China, India, and the former Soviet countries into the global economy has effectively doubled the size of the world's workforce. As a result, labor is relatively abundant, capital is relatively scarce, the returns to labor go down, and the returns to capital go up.

"Having twice as many workers and newly the same amount of capital places great pressure on labor markets throughout the world," writes Freeman. That shifts the balance of power in markets toward capital, as more workers compete for working that capital.

This is the unhappy ending to the global economy story. However, the numbers are also consistent with another, much more upbeat(乐观的) ending. It could be that corporate restructuring efforts in Japan and Europe are finally taking hold, leading to higher profits and faster productivity growth, even as US companies continue their efforts to boost efficiency; And it could be that there's just a lag before the productivity gains get passed on to workers in the form. of higher wages.

So, will we get the happy ending or the sad ending？ There's no way of telling yet—but hey, what fun is a movie with a predictable ending？

Similar to the story in the movie Casablanca, the world economy______.

A．is experiencing dramatic changes

B．is set in complicated political factors

C．involves fierce competition between different parties

D．is developing into two possible opposite directions