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1、IBT-SATIBT-SATIBT-SATIBT-SAT小马过河小马过河专业备考社区专业备考社区BarronBarronBarronBarron 完整阅读文本第完整阅读文本第四四套套4.1 Layers of Social ClassTaken together, income, occupation, and education are good measures ofpeople s social standing. Using a layered model of stratification, mostsociologists describe the class system in
2、the United States as divided intoseveral classes: upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle, and lower class.Each class is defined by characteristics such as income, occupational prestige,and educational attainment. The different groups are arrayed along acontinuum with those with the most money, ed
3、ucation, and prestige at the topand those with the least at the bottom.In the United States, the upper class owns the major share of corporate andpersonal wealth; it includes those who have held wealth for generations as wellas those who have recently become rich. Only a very small proportion ofpeop
4、le actually constitute the upper class, but they control vast amounts ofwealth and power in the United States. They exercise enormous controlthroughout society. Most of their wealth is inherited.Desoite social myths to the contrary, the best predictor of future wealth is thefamily into which you are
5、 born. Each year, the business magazineForbespublishes a list of the “Forbes 400”the four hundred wealthiest families andIBT-SATIBT-SATIBT-SATIBT-SAT小马过河小马过河专业备考社区专业备考社区individuals in the country. Of all the wealth represented on the Forbes 400 list,more than half is inherited. Those on the list who
6、 could be called “self-made”were not typically of modest origins; most inherited significant assets (Forbes,1997; Sklar and Collins, 1997). Those in the upper class with newly acquiredwealth are known as thenouveau riche.Although they may have vast amountsof money, they are often not accepted into “
7、old rich” circles.Theupper middleclass includes those with high incomes and high socialprestige. They tend to be well-educated professionals or business executives.Their earnings can be quite high indeedsuccessful business executives canearn millions of dollars a year. It is difficult to estimate ex
8、actly how manypeople fall into this group because of the difficulty of drawing lines between theupper, upper middle, and middle class. Indeed, the upper middle class is oftenthought of as “middle class” because their lifestyle sets the standard to whichmany aspire, but this lifestyle is simply beyon
9、d the means of a majority ofpeople in the United States.Themiddleclass is hard to define; in part, being “middle class” is more thanjust economic position. By far the majority of Americans identify themselves asmiddle class even though they vary widely in lifestyle and in resources at theirdisposal.
10、 But the idea that the United States is an open-class system leadsmany to think that the majority have a middle-class lifestyle because, ingeneral, people tend not to want to recognize class distinctions in the UnitedIBT-SATIBT-SATIBT-SATIBT-SAT小马过河小马过河专业备考社区专业备考社区States. Thus, the middle class beco
11、mes the ubiquitous norm even thoughmany who call themselves middle class have a tenuous hold on this classposition.In the hierarchy of social class, the lower middle class includes workers in theskilled trades and low-income bureaucratic workers, many of whom mayactually define themselves as middle
12、class. Examples are blue-collar workers(those in skilled trades who do manual labor) and many service workers, suchas secretaries, hairdressers, waitresses, police, and firefighters. Medium tolow income, education, and occupational prestige define the lower middleclass relative to the class groups a
13、bove it. The term “lower”in this classdesignation refers to the relative position of the group in the stratificationsystem, but it has a pejorative sound to many people, especially to people whoare members of this class.Thelowerclass is composed primarily of the displaced and poor. People in thiscla
14、ss have little formal education and are often unemployed or working inminimum-wage jobs. Forty percent of the poor work; 10 percent workyear-round and full timea proportion that has generally increased over time.Recently, the concept of the underclass has been added to the lower class.The underclass
15、 includes those who have been left behind by contemporaryeconomic developments. Rejected from the economic system, those in theunderclass may become dependent on public assistance or illegal activities.IBT-SATIBT-SATIBT-SATIBT-SAT小马过河小马过河专业备考社区专业备考社区4.2 Weather and Chaotic SystemsScientists today ha
16、ve a very good understanding of the physical laws andmathematical equations that govern the behavior and motion of atoms in theair, oceans, and land. Why, then, do we have so much trouble predicting theweather? For a long time, most scientists assumed that the difficulty ofweather prediction would go away once we had enough weather stations tocollect data from around the world and sufficiently powerful computers to dealwith all the data. However, we now know that weather is
