Английский язык для специальных и академических целей: Международные отношения и зарубежное регионоведение. Часть 1 - [29]

Ex. 2. Continue the strings of collocations, translate them. Make up a sentence with one collocation from each list.

Ex. 3. Fill in the gaps with the words from Ex. 1 and Ex. 2.

1. Railway Minister is unlikely _________________with basic passenger fares but may announce

some new trains and measures to improve services.

2. Sri Lankan officials claim that the UN investigation threatens to _______________ the

development of the island.

3. The Great Depression was a great________________ that reduced (social) differences in the

face of common want.

4. According to the author, democracy is not likely to come about unless leadership becomes _______________ to democratisation and governance reform.

5. __________________ decision-making by the powers that be is common in academia.

6. The ethnic, religious, and political diversity of the region has historically _____________

conflict.

7. The purpose of the visit is _______________ economic relations between the two countries,

especially in the field of agriculture.

8. Mary Wollstonecraft's work in ______________ of equality for women led to her being dubbed

the founder of the British Women's Rights Movement.

9. In fact, China was once at the centre of a regional security system, and other states had to conduct their relations with Beijing in a _________________ manner.

10. While Britain has been forced to worship at the altar of equality and _______________ the

values and beliefs of minorities, no-one noticed that the place was falling apart.

11. It was difficult ________________ the idea that a handful of revolutionaries had managed to

seize the entire Egyptian army.

12. Students who search for broad terms on the Internet can be _______________ by useless or

offensive information.

13. Government income redistribution thus not only lowers working individuals' incomes but also ________________ economic growth.

14. The essential problem is that the EU was founded as a political venture but quickly grew into a (promising) economic ____________________.

15. And George Bush has relentlessly promoted a cultural view of the world that _____________

_______ religiosity, patriotism, and uncritical obedience to government.

READING 2

PRE-READING QUESTIONS

1. What is social mobility? What do you think the term “intergenerational vertical social mobility” implies?

2. To your knowledge, what countries have the highest social mobility?

3. What is the connection between social mobility and the American dream?

4. How do you think the US ranks in terms of social mobility?

Skim the text to find out whether you guessed correctly.

THE END OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

By Niall Ferguson / June 26, 2013 — Newsweek (abridged) http://www.newsweek.com/2013/06/26/niall-ferguson-end-american-dream-237614.html

“The United States is where great things are possible.” Those are the words of Elon Musk, whose astonishing career illustrates that the American dream can still come true.

Musk was born in South Africa but emigrated to the United States via Canada in the 1990s. After completing degrees in economics and physics at the University of Pennsylvania, he moved to Silicon Valley, intent on addressing three of the most “important problems that would most affect the future of humanity”: the Internet, clean energy, and space. Having founded PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX, he has pulled off an astonishing triple. At the age of 42, he is worth an estimated $2.4 billion. Way to go!

But for every Musk, how many talented young people are out there who never get those crucial lucky breaks? Everyone knows that the United States has become more unequal in recent decades. Indeed, the last presidential election campaign was dominated by what turned out to be an unequal contest between “the 1 percent” and the “47 percent” whose votes Mitt Romney notoriously wrote off.

But the real problem may be more insidious¹ than the figures about income and wealth distribution imply. Even more disturbing is the growing evidence that social mobility is also declining in America.

The distinction is an important one. For many years, surveys have revealed a fundamental difference between Americans and Europeans. Americans have a much higher toleration for inequality. But that toleration is implicitly conditional on there being more social mobility in the United States than in Europe.

But what if that tradeoff no longer exists? What if the United States now offers the worst of both worlds: high inequality with low social mobility? And what if this is one of the hidden structural obstacles to economic recovery? Indeed, what if current monetary policy is making the problem of social immobility even worse?

This ought to be grist for the mill²⁹³⁰ for American conservatives. But Republicans have flunked the challenge. By failing to distinguish between inequality and mobility, they have allowed

Unit II. US: from Democracy to Empire?

Unit II. US: from Democracy to Empire?

Democrats, in effect, to equate the two, leaving the GOP looking like the party of the 1 percent — hardly an election-winning strategy.