托福/GRE写Economist经济方面写作素材分享

特别地缘政治和新闻类的没有包含，因为对于一般写作的有用性不是特别强。

以下例子也不是为托福/GRE写作量身定做的，更多做个能力上的积累吧。对于结构，构思和语言都是会有所帮助的。

Peter Thiel, scourge of Silicon Valley

A venture capitalist reinvents the military-industrial complex

内容：关于Peter Thiel 反骨硅谷的一篇文章，描述了一个人的多面性，但也可以认为不管是paypal 还是Facebook，还是Palantir，背后都是Peter Thiel 对于自己的产品的笃定

有用性：可以学习下结构

He co-founded PayPal, a payments platform that, as a young libertarian, he hoped would undermine the world’s monetary system. Instead it gave him the money to bestride Silicon Valley, a place he disdains. He was the earliest outside investor in Facebook, a tech giant on whose board he remains, though he mocks social media. As a hedge-fund manager, he bet on an economic meltdown in America ahead of the financial crisis of 2007-09, but called the bottom of the market too soon. He was one of the most prominent financiers to throw his weight behind Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency in 2016. Yet his efforts to populate the Trump administration with radical-thinking acolytes failed.

Reason and its discontents

Steven Pinker’s new defence of reason is impassioned but flawed

内容: 关于Steven Pinker 新书的书评

有用性:

表达= met with praise and objections

观点 = 人类是非理性动物

Mr Pinker, a professor at Harvard, has a lot to get off his chest. His previous book, “Enlightenment Now”, a paean to reason’s role in history, had a mixed reception in 2018. It met with praise (including in The Economist), but also objections that it was simplistic, Panglossian and selective in its evidence. A personal attack followed last year, with a vicious and shoddy campaign demanding that the Linguistic Society of America cancel him. Meanwhile, in recent decades, research in economics and psychology has underlined just how far Homo sapiens falls short of rational beings who maximise their economic welfare and engage in truth-distilling debate.

The future of food

New ways to make food are coming—but will consumers bite?

内容：“人造” 肉

有用性：

观点：可以是不是可以解决人类的粮食问题

结构：正反说: [ 前段是科技带来的promise，后面是存在的问题]

Fortunately, technologies are emerging that promise to produce food in new ways, in large volumes with less inhumane factory farming and a lower environmental footprint. These range from bioreactors that grow meat to indoor “vertical” farms and new ways of producing fish. Such techniques could make a huge difference. Three-quarters of agricultural land is used for livestock, for example, so it is easy to see how steaks made from plant-based protein, or grown in vats from cells, could greatly reduce factory farming and land and water use, and produce fewer emissions.

Just because it is possible to make food in new ways does not mean people will be willing to eat it, however. Given food’s cultural importance, and the fact that it is ingested into the body, conservatism and scepticism are common reactions to new foodstuffs and production processes. In 17th-century Europe many people were loth to eat a new vegetable called the potato because it was not mentioned in the Bible, or because they feared it caused leprosy. Today, many European countries ban the cultivation and sale of genetically modified crops, even though they are widely grown and eaten elsewhere. And although much of the world considers insects a mouth-watering treat (and locust-eating is endorsed in the Bible), the very idea revolts many Western consumers.

Facepalm

Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

内容：facebook 的公共危机 【文章觉得Mark Zuckerberg 要负一定的责任，但从今天Facebook 改名这个事情来看，老板的意思是名字有些晦气，自己没有问题】

有用性：

观点 = 有些针对Facebook的指责更多是情绪，不够理中客

语料 = 1.人们对于坏消息比较敏感 2. Internet 的问题  3. leader 对于公司的影响

A share of the opprobrium heaped on Facebook is incoherent.

Some of this week’s criticism was tendentious. Reports highlighted internal research showing that Instagram, Facebook’s photo-sharing app, makes one in five American teenagers feel worse about themselves. They paid less attention to the finding that Instagram makes twice as many feel better about themselves. Facebook’s critics are right that it should be more open. But the firm has half a point when it says that the hysterical reaction to unsurprising findings will lead companies to conclude that it is safer not to do such research at all. 【这个段落可以用来写人们对于bad information 更为敏感的话题】

Other complaints are really criticisms of the broader internet. The question of how to regulate viral content for children goes beyond Facebook, as any parent who has left their child with YouTube knows. Likewise, dilemmas over how the firm amplifies attention and how to draw the line between upholding free speech and minimising harm. Facebook repeated its plea that Congress should weigh in on matters such as minimum ages, rather than leaving it to firms. It has made a better stab than most at settling free-speech questions with its “oversight board”, a pompous-sounding but quietly useful body which dispenses rulings on matters from misogyny to misinformation. 【这个段落可以用来写科技的问题】

If rational argument alone is no longer enough to get Facebook out of its hole, the company should look hard at its public face. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s all-powerful founder, made a reasoned statement after this week’s wave of anger. He was ignored or ridiculed and increasingly looks like a liability. 【这个段落可以用来写leader 对于公司发展的影响】

Tentacular spectacular

South Koreans are bemused by the global success of “Squid Game”

内容： “Squid Game”的爆红

观点：韩国国内原来的反响不好，但是国外的火也是倒逼了国内收视。

语料：可以用于类似看国内还是国外电影的话题

When “squid game” appeared on Netflix in mid-September, many South Korean reviewers were underwhelmed by the home-grown survival drama. They found the characters clichéd, the plot unconvincing and the violence gratuitous. The whole thing, they complained, was too similar to older films, such as the Japanese “Battle Royale”, and added nothing new to the survival genre, notwithstanding the striking set designs and star-studded cast. “Even though every genre has its clichés, too much in ‘Squid Game’ reminds you of every other movie you’ve ever seen,” complained one critic.

“Squid Game” has taken the world by storm. It is currently the most-streamed show on Netflix in all but a handful of the company’s markets. It has entered mainstream cultural consciousness, spawning millions of videos on TikTok, thousands of memes and dozens of earnest articles dissecting the show’s meaning. Cafés all over the world have started selling their own takes on dalgona, a Korean candy featured in one episode. In Paris fights broke out as fans tried to force their way into a pop-up shop where visitors could pose with staff dressed like the pink-suited enforcers from the show.

Virtue’s reward

An advocate of sustainable capitalism explains how it’s done

内容：联合利华前CEO, Paul Polman 的一本新书 Net Positive 的书评

语料：公司角色

What is the purpose of a company? For some, the answer is simple: to make as much money for shareholders as the law permits. But many modern companies take a much broader view. They argue that business should also serve workers, consumers and society at large, and that profit should not be pursued at the expense of the environment or social justice.

Schumpeter

What if firms were forced to pay for frying the planet

内容：企业的污染要不要收税

语料：carbon tax 的利弊

This feeds into a third problem: consumption. A high carbon tax is bound to push up prices, which will change consumer behaviour, especially among lower earners. The tourism industry, for instance, would have to rely less on customers arriving by cheap flights. Supermarkets would need to provide more local foods. People might start tracking the carbon trail of some things they buy, creating headaches for retailers like Amazon.

The flip side would be more innovation. The International Energy Agency, which represents energy-consuming countries, said last year that investments in low-carbon research and development had barely budged since 2012, and was a fifth of what was spent on health and defence. This is pitiful. A carbon tax would change that. Think of hyperloops for long-distant transport; eating bugs, seaweed and lab-grown meat; an endless stream of virtual-reality entertainment as people stay at home rather than consume goods that become less affordable owing to the carbon bill.