Английский разговорный язык. Практическое пособие по развитию устной речи

Consider, for example, an unemployed person who is used to making $10.00 an hour. On unemployment insurance this person receives about 55 percent of normal earnings, or $5.50 per lost work hour. If that person is in a 15 percent federal tax bracket, and a 3 percent state tax bracket, he or she pays $0.99 in taxes per hour not worked and nets $4.51 per hour after taxes as compensation for not working. If that person took a job that paid $10.00 per hour, governments would take 18 percent for income taxes and 7.5 percent for Social Security taxes, netting him or her $7.45 per hour of work. Comparing the two payments, this person may decide that a day of leisure is worth more than the extra $2.94 an hour the job would pay. If so, this means that the unemployment insurance raises the person\'s reservation wage to above $10.00 per hour.

Слова и выражения:

bracket – категория, налоговая ниша

claim – требовать, предъявлять требования, заявлять

compel – принуждать, понуждать

concern – озабоченность

frictional – фрикционная

induce – понуждать, принуждать

leisure – отдых, досуг

net – получать «чистыми» ( после налогообложения )

prompt – подсказывать

recipient – получатель

report – сообщать, извещать, докладывать

structural – структурная

welfare – благосостояние

major concern

– главная причина озабоченности

be counted as – считаться (в качестве)

people within the labour force – люди, включенные в число рабочей силы, трудовых ресурсов

industry downturn – спад в промышленности

welfare payment – пособие, направленное на повышение уровня благосостояния

assistance programs – программы помощи

work-registration requirement – регистрационные требования для безработных

job hunting – поиски работы, «охота на работу»

collect benefits – получать блага

reservation wage – резервационная зарплата

tax bracket – категория налогоплательщиков

Exercise 9

Answer the questions:

1. Why are unemployment statistics of major concern for most economists?

2. What people does the unemployment rate in many countries include?

3. What types of unemployment can there be?

4. What are the two causes of long-term unemployment in the developed countries?

5. What does government assistance induce unemployed to do?

6. What is the difference between the unemployed and the unemployed?

7. How does unemployment insurance change the measure of unemployment?

8. What is a reservation wage?

9. How much does an unemployed receive relative to what he would receive while working?

10. Does unemployment in developed countries create incentives to work?

Productivity

Productivity is the basic criterion of an economy\'s health. When productivity is rising, living standards and the quality of life are rising as well. The rate of productivity growth is the most important thing for the economic well-being of a country.

The most familiar definition of labour productivity is output divided by the number of workers or, more usually, by the number of hours worked. Output can be expressed in tons of iron or numbers of jeans\' pairs, but usually it is some very broad aggregate like gross domestic product.

Other ways of defining productivity take into consideration other inputs, such as managerial skill, innovation and technology, organization.

While such factors of production as land or population are always limited, the prospects for increasing productivity are boundless. Studies of the US economy show that half of the growth in labour productivity in the postwar years there has been due not to the use of added capital, but to making better use of these inputs.

There are only three ways by which a country can raise the level of consumption, and, correspondingly, of its well-being. First, a larger number of citizens can go to work. Second, a country can borrow from abroad. Third, the country can increase productivity of labour. Whereas there are limits on what portion of the population can join the home labour force and on how much foreigners will lend, the potential for boosting productivity are limitless.