English Test - 85

Directions: Read the following passage carefully:

Today's economy is designed near-perfectly to reward wealth ahead of work. This is Oxfam's story at Davos.

And we're not even seriously attacked any more for saying it. It's as if inequality apologists can barely be bothered because - and this does worry me - they don't feel their cosy system is threatened enough that they need to.

So this year, more than ever, I am wondering who really holds the answers here. Are some of us waiting for science to come up with some new technology that will magically solve the problem, as I suspect many people are anxiously hoping for a discovery that will stop climate change? Are we waiting for the enfranchised masses to vote for "change", for the next radical option presented to them? For a revolution?

Or do we think that corporate and political leaders will finally be moved towards enlightened collective interest all of a sudden?

I'm afraid the answer to the last one is that, beyond some notable exceptions, there is no appeal for capitalist elites to be nice. Business ethics are either imposed by regulation or else they exist off-balance-sheet, maybe on a voluntary basis - something that companies can pick up and pay lip service to when necessary. Instead, we need to look to the business trailblazers like those leading innovative models based upon equity - worker owned companies such as the multibillion-dollar Mondragon in Spain and Amul in India, for example.

Or those willing to consider a visionary idea. We are putting the case to business leaders that they should not pay a penny in shareholder dividends and executive bonuses until all their workers are getting a living wage and their producers a fair price. We need to be less worried about disruptive new technologies, but more proactive in understanding and harnessing them properly.

The utility of every invention depends on how it is owned and controlled for the public good.

Law has the power to ensure that nobody should work on a level of pay that they cannot live a decent life.

This means governments getting back into the driving seat. In days gone by, governments would value the masses because they needed them for their factories and armies, and so they would feed, educate and keep them healthy. That's changed today.

Then we were sold the idea that trade-fueled growth would spread around the world, carried by democracy, on a rising tide that would "lift up all boats". That's failed, too. The unspoken contract between the elites and the 99 percent that unfettered market globalization and liberalization should benefit us all is broken. Globalization has lifted many people out of the most abject poverty and we celebrate that. But it has been even more successful in boosting an elite few into super-yachts stuffed with stupendous wealth, while dumping hundreds of millions of people onto the flotsam and jetsam at the bottom.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully:

Today's economy is designed near-perfectly to reward wealth ahead of work. This is Oxfam's story at Davos.

And we're not even seriously attacked any more for saying it. It's as if inequality apologists can barely be bothered because - and this does worry me - they don't feel their cosy system is threatened enough that they need to.

So this year, more than ever, I am wondering who really holds the answers here. Are some of us waiting for science to come up with some new technology that will magically solve the problem, as I suspect many people are anxiously hoping for a discovery that will stop climate change? Are we waiting for the enfranchised masses to vote for "change", for the next radical option presented to them? For a revolution?

Or do we think that corporate and political leaders will finally be moved towards enlightened collective interest all of a sudden?

I'm afraid the answer to the last one is that, beyond some notable exceptions, there is no appeal for capitalist elites to be nice. Business ethics are either imposed by regulation or else they exist off-balance-sheet, maybe on a voluntary basis - something that companies can pick up and pay lip service to when necessary. Instead, we need to look to the business trailblazers like those leading innovative models based upon equity - worker owned companies such as the multibillion-dollar Mondragon in Spain and Amul in India, for example.

Or those willing to consider a visionary idea. We are putting the case to business leaders that they should not pay a penny in shareholder dividends and executive bonuses until all their workers are getting a living wage and their producers a fair price. We need to be less worried about disruptive new technologies, but more proactive in understanding and harnessing them properly.

The utility of every invention depends on how it is owned and controlled for the public good.

Law has the power to ensure that nobody should work on a level of pay that they cannot live a decent life.

This means governments getting back into the driving seat. In days gone by, governments would value the masses because they needed them for their factories and armies, and so they would feed, educate and keep them healthy. That's changed today.

Then we were sold the idea that trade-fueled growth would spread around the world, carried by democracy, on a rising tide that would "lift up all boats". That's failed, too. The unspoken contract between the elites and the 99 percent that unfettered market globalization and liberalization should benefit us all is broken. Globalization has lifted many people out of the most abject poverty and we celebrate that. But it has been even more successful in boosting an elite few into super-yachts stuffed with stupendous wealth, while dumping hundreds of millions of people onto the flotsam and jetsam at the bottom.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully:

Today's economy is designed near-perfectly to reward wealth ahead of work. This is Oxfam's story at Davos.

And we're not even seriously attacked any more for saying it. It's as if inequality apologists can barely be bothered because - and this does worry me - they don't feel their cosy system is threatened enough that they need to.

So this year, more than ever, I am wondering who really holds the answers here. Are some of us waiting for science to come up with some new technology that will magically solve the problem, as I suspect many people are anxiously hoping for a discovery that will stop climate change? Are we waiting for the enfranchised masses to vote for "change", for the next radical option presented to them? For a revolution?

Or do we think that corporate and political leaders will finally be moved towards enlightened collective interest all of a sudden?

I'm afraid the answer to the last one is that, beyond some notable exceptions, there is no appeal for capitalist elites to be nice. Business ethics are either imposed by regulation or else they exist off-balance-sheet, maybe on a voluntary basis - something that companies can pick up and pay lip service to when necessary. Instead, we need to look to the business trailblazers like those leading innovative models based upon equity - worker owned companies such as the multibillion-dollar Mondragon in Spain and Amul in India, for example.

Or those willing to consider a visionary idea. We are putting the case to business leaders that they should not pay a penny in shareholder dividends and executive bonuses until all their workers are getting a living wage and their producers a fair price. We need to be less worried about disruptive new technologies, but more proactive in understanding and harnessing them properly.

The utility of every invention depends on how it is owned and controlled for the public good.

Law has the power to ensure that nobody should work on a level of pay that they cannot live a decent life.

This means governments getting back into the driving seat. In days gone by, governments would value the masses because they needed them for their factories and armies, and so they would feed, educate and keep them healthy. That's changed today.

Then we were sold the idea that trade-fueled growth would spread around the world, carried by democracy, on a rising tide that would "lift up all boats". That's failed, too. The unspoken contract between the elites and the 99 percent that unfettered market globalization and liberalization should benefit us all is broken. Globalization has lifted many people out of the most abject poverty and we celebrate that. But it has been even more successful in boosting an elite few into super-yachts stuffed with stupendous wealth, while dumping hundreds of millions of people onto the flotsam and jetsam at the bottom.

Directions: Read the following passage carefully:

Today's economy is designed near-perfectly to reward wealth ahead of work. This is Oxfam's story at Davos.

And we're not even seriously attacked any more for saying it. It's as if inequality apologists can barely be bothered because - and this does worry me - they don't feel their cosy system is threatened enough that they need to.

So this year, more than ever, I am wondering who really holds the answers here. Are some of us waiting for science to come up with some new technology that will magically solve the problem, as I suspect many people are anxiously hoping for a discovery that will stop climate change? Are we waiting for the enfranchised masses to vote for "change", for the next radical option presented to them? For a revolution?

Or do we think that corporate and political leaders will finally be moved towards enlightened collective interest all of a sudden?

I'm afraid the answer to the last one is that, beyond some notable exceptions, there is no appeal for capitalist elites to be nice. Business ethics are either imposed by regulation or else they exist off-balance-sheet, maybe on a voluntary basis - something that companies can pick up and pay lip service to when necessary. Instead, we need to look to the business trailblazers like those leading innovative models based upon equity - worker owned companies such as the multibillion-dollar Mondragon in Spain and Amul in India, for example.

Or those willing to consider a visionary idea. We are putting the case to business leaders that they should not pay a penny in shareholder dividends and executive bonuses until all their workers are getting a living wage and their producers a fair price. We need to be less worried about disruptive new technologies, but more proactive in understanding and harnessing them properly.

The utility of every invention depends on how it is owned and controlled for the public good.

Law has the power to ensure that nobody should work on a level of pay that they cannot live a decent life.

This means governments getting back into the driving seat. In days gone by, governments would value the masses because they needed them for their factories and armies, and so they would feed, educate and keep them healthy. That's changed today.

Then we were sold the idea that trade-fueled growth would spread around the world, carried by democracy, on a rising tide that would "lift up all boats". That's failed, too. The unspoken contract between the elites and the 99 percent that unfettered market globalization and liberalization should benefit us all is broken. Globalization has lifted many people out of the most abject poverty and we celebrate that. But it has been even more successful in boosting an elite few into super-yachts stuffed with stupendous wealth, while dumping hundreds of millions of people onto the flotsam and jetsam at the bottom.