考研英語作文:萬能的美元

The Almtghty Dollar

      Political and technological developments are rapidly obliterating all cultural differences and it is possible that, in a not remote future, it will be impossible to distinguish human beings living on one area of the earth’s surface from those living on any other, but our different pasts have not yet been completely erased and .cultural differences are still perceptible. The most striking difference between an American and a European is the difference in their attitudes towards money.  Every European knows, as a matter of historical fact, that, in Europe, wealth could only be acquired at the expense of other human beings,either by conquering them or by exploiting their labor in factories. Further, even after the Industrial Revolution began, the number of persons who could rise from poverty to wealth was small: the vast majority took it for granted that they should not.be much richer nor poorer than their fathers. In consequence,no European associates wealth with personal merit or poverty with personal failure.

      In the United States, wealth was also acquired by stealing, but the real exploited victim was not a human being but poor Mother Earth and her creatures who were ruthlessly plundered. It is true that the Indians were expropriated, but this was not, as it had always been in Europe, a matter of the conqueror seizing the wealth of the conquered, for the Indian had never realized the potential riches of his country. It is also true that, in the Southern states, men lived on the labor of slaves, but slave labor did not make them fortunes; what made slavery in the South all the more inexcusable was that,in addition to being morally wicked, it didn’t even pay off handsomely.

      Thanks to the natural resources of the country, every American, until quite recently, could reasonably look forward to making more money than his father, so that, if he made less,the fault must be his; he was either lazy or inefficient. What an American values, therefore, is not the possession of money as such, but his power to make it as a proof of his manhood;once he has proved himself by making it, it has served its function and can be lost or given away. In no society in history have rich men given away so large a part of their fortunes. A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothing to increase it; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?

萬能的美元

    政治與科技的發(fā)展正迅速消除一切文化差異，在不久的將來，人們有可能沒辦法把地球上一個(gè)地區(qū)的人與居住在另一個(gè)地區(qū)的人區(qū)分開來，但我們不同的過去還沒有完全被抹滅，文化的差異依然清晰可見。  美國人與歐洲人之間最明顯的不同在于他們對待金錢的態(tài)度不同。每個(gè)歐洲人都知道(其實(shí)這也是歷史事實(shí))：在歐洲要獲得財(cái)富只能犧牲別人，不論是通過征服他們，還是通過在工廠里剝削他們的勞動(dòng)。此外，即使工業(yè)革命開始后，能由窮變富的人仍是少數(shù)：絕大多數(shù)人認(rèn)為他們不會比自己上一代富太多或窮太多是理所當(dāng)然的事。  因此，沒有歐洲人會把財(cái)富與個(gè)人成就，或者把貧窮與個(gè)人失敗聯(lián)系在一起。在美國，財(cái)富也是偷盜而來，但那個(gè)真正受剝削的犧牲品不是人，而是被殘酷掠奪的的可憐的大地母親和她的生物。印第安人確實(shí)被剝奪了土地，但這并不像在歐洲那樣征服者掠奪被征服者的財(cái)富，因?yàn)橛〉诎踩藦膩頉]有意識到他們國土上潛在的財(cái)富。在南方各州，也的確有人靠奴隸的勞動(dòng)生活，但奴隸勞力并沒有使他們發(fā)大財(cái)；南方奴隸制尤其不可原諒之處，除了它道德上極惡劣外，還在于它甚至不能慷慨地讓南方人賺一大筆錢。