题目内容

Business has slowed, layoffs mount, but executive pay continues to roar-at least so far. Business Week’s annual survey finds that chief executive officers (CEOs) at 365 of the largest companies got compensation last year averaging $3.1 million-up 1.3 percent from 1994. Why are the top bosses getting an estimated 485 times the pay of a typical factory worker That is up from 475 times in 1999 and a mere 42 times in 1980. One reason maybe what experts call the "Lake Wobegon effect". Corporate boards tend to reckon that "all CEOs are above average" -a play on Garrison Keillor’s famous line in his public radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, that all the town’s children are "above average". Consultants provide boards with surveys of corporate CEO compensation. Since directors are reluctant to regard their CEOs as below average, the compensation committees of boards tend to set pay at an above-average level. The result: pay levels get ratcheted (一步步地增加) up. Defenders of lavish CEO pay argue there is such a strong demand for experienced CEOs that the free market forces their pay up. They further maintain most boards structure pay packages to reflect an executive’s performance. They get paid more if their companies and their stock do well. So companies with high-paid CEOs generate great wealth for their shareholders. But the supposed cream-of-the-crop executives did surprisingly poorly for their shareholders in 1999, says Scott Klinger, author of this report by a Boston-based Organization United for a Fair Economy. If an investor had put $10,000 apiece at the end of 1999 into the stock of those companies with the 10 highest-paid CEOs, by year-end 2000 the investment would have shrunk to $8,132. If $10,000 had been put into the Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks, it would have been worth $9,090. To Mr. Klinger, these findings suggest that the theory that one person, the CEO, is responsible for creating most of a corporation’s value is dead wrong. "It takes many employees to make a corporation profitable." With profits down, corporate boards may make more effort to tame executive compensation. And executives are making greater efforts to avoid pay cuts. Some CEOs, seeing their options "under water" or worthless because of falling stock prices, are seeking more pay in cash or in restricted stock. The author mentioned "Lake Wobegon effect" in the second paragraph in order to ______.

A. explain why all CEOs are above average
B. show the play named A Prairie Home companion
C. describe the town’s children who are above average
D. suggest one possible reason for why CEOs get high pay

查看答案
更多问题

New Product Will Save Lives Drinking water that looks clean may still contain bugs (虫子), which can cause illness. A small company called Genera Technologies has produced a testing method in three stages, which shows whether water is safe. The new test shows if water needs chemicals added to it, to destroy anything harmful. It was invented by scientist Dr. Adrian Patton, who started Genera five years ago. He and his employees have developed the test together with a British water company. Andy Headland, Genera’s marketing director, recently presented the test at a conference in the USA and forecast good American sales for it. Genera has already sold 11 of its tests at $42,500 a time in the U.K. and has a further four on order. It expects to sell another 25 tests before the end of March. The company says it is the only test in the U.K. to be approved by the government. Genera was formed five years ago and until October last year had only five employees; it now employs 14. Mr. Headland believes that the company should make around $19 million by the end of the year in the U.K. alone. The British government is helping Dr. Parton to sell the tests abroad.

A. Right
B. Wrong
C. Not mentioned

What should be done if one wants to gain or lose weight The process of gaining or losing weight can be explained by comparing your body to your car. Both run 1 fuel, food for your body and gasoline for your car. Both 2 that fuel, first into heat, then energy, some of 3 is used to do work, and some emitted as waste. And 4 your car uses more energy when the engine is racing than when it is idling, 5 does your body use more energy when you are working hard than 6 you are resting. For the purpose of this comparison, 7 , there is one significant difference between them. Your car cannot store fuel by turning it into 8 else; all gasoline not 9 remains as gasoline. But your body stores 10 energy as fat. When the gas tank is 11 empty, the car won’t run; but your body can burn fat to provide more energy. Therefore, if you want to gain weight, you must do 12 of two things: eat more calories (units of heat, therefore energy), or use less through 13 . If you want to lose weight, you do the 14 , decrease your intake of calories or increase the amount of energy you spend. There is 15 way. Gaining or losing weight is always a relation between intake and output of potential energy.

A. inactivity
B. inattention
C. cycling
D. jogging

Continue to Protect or Destroy Ecosystem Biosphere Ⅱ was a spectacular failure. The gleaming glass-and-concrete habitat sprawling across the desert in Oracle, Arizona, was supposed to support eight human "biospherians" for two years. But the seal has to he broken before the experiment ended in 1993. Oxygen had fallen to levels normally seen at an elevation of 17,500 feet. Nitrous oxide had risen to the point where it threatened to cause brain damage. The fresh water supply became contaminated, and vines smothered (厚厚地覆盖) food plants. Insect pollinators (传授花粉的生物) and many other species became extinct. By the end, Biosphere Ⅱ was overrun with swarms of ants and cockroaches. Scientists who gathered recently to review the Biosphere Ⅱ experiment reached a disturbing conclusion: "No one yet knows how to engineer systems that provide humans with the life-supporting services that natural ecosystems produce for free." The problem is that these ecosystems are undergoing wrenching changes. Water and air quality, while improving in some regions, are deteriorating in many others. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere arc climbing. The world’s population could reach 10 billion by 2050. And famed Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson says the current rate of species losses puts us "in the midst of one of the great extinction spasms (突然进发) of geological history." All of which makes many ecologists wonder whether humans too will soon become extinct. It’s an incredibly important but incredibly difficult question. If we continue on this course, we’re heading for a world in which we will have to engineer services we’ve always received for free from nature. That’s why the failure of Biosphere Ⅱ was so disturbing: it proves that we don’t yet know how to do that. The Biosphere Ⅱ experience demonstrated that maintaining human life is a tricky proposition-especially if we can no longer rely on the services provided by natural ecosystems. If we are currently living through a mass extinction, as Wilson believes, we should consider the past. In the great Permian extinction 245 million years ago, 96 percent of species perished. Eventually, the Earth was repopulated with a rich collection of new species, but it took 100 million years. "That should give pause to anyone who believes that what Homo sapiens (现代人) destroys, nature will redeem," Wilson says. "Maybe so, but not within any length of time that has meaning for contemporary humanity." It is implied that many ecologists ______.

A. believe the world’s ecosystems are in an undesirable condition
B. agree that the environment of the world is not as bad as it is thought to be
C. appear somewhat unconcerned about the state of the world’s environment
D. have thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the world’s environment

Continue to Protect or Destroy Ecosystem Biosphere Ⅱ was a spectacular failure. The gleaming glass-and-concrete habitat sprawling across the desert in Oracle, Arizona, was supposed to support eight human "biospherians" for two years. But the seal has to he broken before the experiment ended in 1993. Oxygen had fallen to levels normally seen at an elevation of 17,500 feet. Nitrous oxide had risen to the point where it threatened to cause brain damage. The fresh water supply became contaminated, and vines smothered (厚厚地覆盖) food plants. Insect pollinators (传授花粉的生物) and many other species became extinct. By the end, Biosphere Ⅱ was overrun with swarms of ants and cockroaches. Scientists who gathered recently to review the Biosphere Ⅱ experiment reached a disturbing conclusion: "No one yet knows how to engineer systems that provide humans with the life-supporting services that natural ecosystems produce for free." The problem is that these ecosystems are undergoing wrenching changes. Water and air quality, while improving in some regions, are deteriorating in many others. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere arc climbing. The world’s population could reach 10 billion by 2050. And famed Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson says the current rate of species losses puts us "in the midst of one of the great extinction spasms (突然进发) of geological history." All of which makes many ecologists wonder whether humans too will soon become extinct. It’s an incredibly important but incredibly difficult question. If we continue on this course, we’re heading for a world in which we will have to engineer services we’ve always received for free from nature. That’s why the failure of Biosphere Ⅱ was so disturbing: it proves that we don’t yet know how to do that. The Biosphere Ⅱ experience demonstrated that maintaining human life is a tricky proposition-especially if we can no longer rely on the services provided by natural ecosystems. If we are currently living through a mass extinction, as Wilson believes, we should consider the past. In the great Permian extinction 245 million years ago, 96 percent of species perished. Eventually, the Earth was repopulated with a rich collection of new species, but it took 100 million years. "That should give pause to anyone who believes that what Homo sapiens (现代人) destroys, nature will redeem," Wilson says. "Maybe so, but not within any length of time that has meaning for contemporary humanity." What is the purpose of the experiment mentioned in this passage

A. To propose measures to hold back environmental deteriorating.
B. To predict environmental deteriorating that can cause vast destruction.
C. To limit the destruction that environmental deteriorating may cause.
D. To see if humans can engineer systems providing life-supporting services.

答案查题题库