Even more troubling is that our notion of America as the land of opportunity gets little support from the data. Americans move fairly easily up and down the middle rungs of the ladder, but there is st
Even more troubling is that our notion of America as the land of opportunity gets little support from the data. Americans move fairly easily up and down the middle rungs of the ladder, but there is "stickiness at the ends" - four out of ten children who are born poor will remain poor, and four out often who are born rich will stay rich.
21.
What did the Economic Mobility Project find in its research?
(A) Children from low-income families are unable to bootstrap their way to the top.
(B) Hollywood actors and actresses are upwardly mobile from rags to riches.
(C) The rags to riches story is more fiction than reality.
(D)The rags to riches story is only true for a small minority of whites.
22.
The word "quintile" (para.4) refers to _______ in the passage.
(A) the bottom fifth
(B) the study data
(C) the sample group
(D) the lowest family income
23.
It can be inferred from the undertone of the writer that America, as a classless society, should _______.
(A) perfect its self-image as a land of opportunity
(B) have a higher level of upward mobility than Britain
(C) enable African-Americans to have exclusive access to well-paid employment
(D) encourage the current generation to work as hard as the previous generation
24.
Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?
(A) The US is a land where brains, energy and ambition are what counts.
(B) Inequality persists between whites and blacks in financial gains.
(C) Middle-class families earn slightly less with inflation considered.
(D) Children in lowest-income families manage to climb a single rung of the ladder.
25.
What might be the best title for this passage?
(A) Social Upward Mobility.
(B) Incredible Income Gains.
(C) Inequality in Wealth.
(D) America Not Land of Opportunity.
Questions 26-30
I am always a little puzzled when I hear people complain about the difficulties of finding a good job. Young people in their 20s express dissatisfaction that all the good jobs have been taken by those in their 40s. People in their 40s, trapped in the middle groups of the workforce, complain about waiting for their elders to make room for them at the top. Older employees worry about being forced out of the job market prematurely by younger people willing to work at entry-level wages. It is not a pretty picture.
But I do not buy it. In my view, differences between generations are not a problem but an opportunity-if you remember to apply some basic principles of self-marketing. Most of us learned from Marketing 101 textbooks that there are four phases in the life cycle of a product or brand. The names may differ, but essentially the four phases are Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline. As a manager of high-profile athletes for more than 30 years, I know that these four phases certainly apply to the career and marketability of an athlete.
An athlete's introduction or start-up phase is when he or she starts competing, does well and captures the attention of people in the sport. Introduction turns into the growth phase when the athlete goes from being a promising performer to an established star. That's when everybody wants a piece of the athlete's time and he must stay focused on his primary talent and not get distracted by side issues.
For an athlete, the toughest thing about the mature phase may simply be recognizing that he or she is in it. If you're marketing a bar of soap it is easy to tell if the product is mature. It is there in the stagnant or shrinking sales figures. It is different with athletes. Not only do they think the growth phase will never end, but they often deny that there is any decrease in their athletic skills or marketability, no matter what the numbers say.
The decline phase for an athlete may sound harsh, but it doesn't have to be if he or she thinks of it as a reflective phase. In this phase an athlete can have tremendous future as a legendary figure who functions as an ambassador for his or her sport. If you substitute "employee" for "athlete" in these examples, these four phases apply to any individual's career.
I genuinely believe that whenever people face a career crisis, a big reason is because they are "out of phase." I have always been a tremendous advocate of recruiting older workers. With the massive downsizing of corporate America, there are tens of thousands of talented men and women over the age of 50 who feel shut out of the work-place. To me, these people are a gold mine-not because they are available but rather because they possess the qualities that employees in the introduction and growth phases lack, namely wisdom and experience. And since many of them received generous early-retirement packages, money is not their sole motivation. In other words, they are affordable.
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