2016年06月六级第1套仔细阅读 Passage 2 原文翻译及答案解析

What can be done about mass unemployment? All the wise heads agree: there are no quick or easy answers. There's work to be done, but workers aren't ready to do it—they're in the wrong places, or they have the wrong skills. Our problems are "structural," and will take many years to solve.

关于大规模失业，我们能做些什么？所有智者都认为：没有快速或简单的答案。有工作要做，但工人们没有准备好去做——他们要么在错误的地方，要么拥有错误的技能。我们的问题是“结构性的”，需要很多年才能解决。

But don't bother asking for evidence that justifies this bleak view. There isn't any. On the contrary, all the facts suggest that high unemployment in America is the result of inadequate demand. Saying that there're no easy answers sounds wise, but it's actually foolish: our unemployment crisis could be cured very quickly if we had the intellectual clarity and political will to act. In other words, structural unemployment is a fake problem, which mainly serves as an excuse for not pursuing real solutions.

但不必费心去寻找证据来证明这种悲观观点。实际上没有证据。相反，所有事实表明，美国的高失业率是需求不足的结果。说没有简单答案听起来很明智，但实际上很愚蠢：如果我们有清醒的智力和政治意愿去行动，失业危机可以很快得到解决。换句话说，结构性失业是一个假问题，主要用作不追求真正解决方案的借口。

The fact is job openings have plunged in every major sector, while the number of workers forced into part-time employment in almost all industries has soared. Unemployment has surged in every major occupational category. Only three states, with a combined population not much larger than that of Brooklyn, have unemployment rates below 5%. So the evidence contradicts the claim that we're mainly suffering from structural unemployment. Why, then, has this claim become so popular?

事实是，每个主要行业的职位空缺都急剧下降，而几乎所有行业中被迫从事兼职工作的工人数却激增。失业率在每个主要职业类别中都飙升。只有三个州，其总人口不比布鲁克林大多少，失业率低于5%。因此，证据与我们主要遭受结构性失业的主张相矛盾。那么，为什么这一主张变得如此流行？

Part of the answer is that this is what always happens during periods of high unemployment-in part because experts and analysts believe that declaring the problem deeply rooted, with no easy answers, makes them sound serious.

部分答案是，这总是在高失业率时期发生的——部分原因是专家和分析师认为，宣布问题根深蒂固、没有简单答案，会让他们听起来很严肃。

I've been looking at what self-proclaimed experts were saying about unemployment during the Great Depression; it was almost identical to what Very Serious People are saying now. Unemployment cannot be brought down rapidly, declared one 1935 analysis, because the workforce is "unadaptable and untrained. It cannot respond to the opportunities which industry may offer." A few years later, a large defense buildup finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy's needs—and suddenly industry was eager to employ those "unadaptable and untrained" workers.

我一直在研究大萧条期间自封的专家们关于失业的说法；这与现在“非常严肃的人”所说的几乎一模一样。1935年的一项分析宣称，失业率不能迅速下降，因为劳动力“无法适应且未经训练。它无法应对工业可能提供的机会。”几年后，大规模的国防建设终于提供了足够的财政刺激来满足经济需求——突然间，工业界渴望雇佣那些“无法适应且未经训练”的工人。

But now, as then, powerful forces are ideologically opposed to the whole idea of government action on a sufficient scale to jump-start the economy. And that, fundamentally, is why claims that we face huge structural problems have-been multiplying: they offer a reason to do nothing about the mass unemployment that is crippling our economy and our society.

但如今，就像过去一样，强大的势力在意识形态上反对政府采取足够规模的行动来启动经济。根本上，这就是为什么我们面临巨大结构性问题的主张越来越多：它们为对正在削弱我们经济和社会的大规模失业无所作为提供了理由。

So what you need to know is that there's no evidence whatsoever to back these claims. We aren't suffering from a shortage of needed skills; we're suffering from a lack of policy resolve. As I said, structural unemployment isn't a real problem, it's an excuse -- a reason not to act on America's problems at a time when action is desperately needed.

所以你需要知道的是，没有任何证据支持这些主张。我们并非缺乏所需技能；我们缺乏的是政策决心。正如我所说，结构性失业不是一个真正的问题，而是一个借口——在迫切需要行动的时候，不对美国问题采取行动的理由。