2016年英语专四真题word版
punishment --- even the disgrace of being charged with a crime --- is sufficient to deter the middle class, while for members of the underclass, probation may be translated as “I beat it”.
(8) So how can you use the system --- welfare or criminal justice --- to produce the behavior we want? The answer, I suspect is: You can’t.
(9) We keep trying to use welfare and prison to change people --- to make them think and behave the way we do --- when the truth is the incentives work only for those who already think the way we do: who view today’s action with an eye on the future.
(10) We will take lowly work (if that is all that’s available) because we believe we can make bad jobs work for us. We avoid crime not because we are better people but because we see getting caught as a future-wrecking disaster. We are guided by a belief that good things will happen for us in the future if we take proper care of the present. Even under the worst of circumstances, we believe we are in control of our lives.
(11) And we have trouble understanding that not everybody believes as we believe. The welfare rolls, the prison and the mean street of our cities are full of people who have given up on their future. Without hope for the future, hard work at a low-paid job makes no sense. Working hard in school, or pleasing a boss, or avoiding pregnancy makes no sense. The deadly disease is hopelessness. The lawlessness and poverty are only the obvious symptoms.
(12) I’m not advocating that we stop looking for incentives to move poor people toward self-sufficiency or that we stop punishing people for criminal behavior. There will always be some people who need help and some who deserve to be in jail.
(13) All I’m saying is that the long-term answer both to welfare and the crime that plagues our communities is not to fine tune the welfare and criminal justice systems but to prevent our children from getting the disease of despair.
(14) If we encourage our young people to believe in the future, and give them solid evidence for believing, we’ll find both crime and poverty shrinking to manageable proportions.
48. What is the author’s attitude towards Clinton’s proposal to welfare?