English Quiz 140

(English Quiz 140)

1. The shift to part-time workers is also exacerbating the income disparity that more than 90% of Japanese believe is a growing problem, according to a recent poll by the broadcaster NHK. Although Japan has never fully realized its self-image as ichioku sochuryu (the nation of middle-class people), the income gap is getting worse because the rich are getting richer while the poor are actually losing ground. According to the O.E.C.D., Japan is now second to the U.S. among developed countries in terms of relative poverty—the proportion of people living on 50% less than the median income. The gap is readily apparent in spending patterns. The only two categories of automobiles to show sales growth in Japan last year were ultra-cheap minicars and luxury imports.
Q: 試翻 "The shift to ... the broadcaster NHK."

2. Fears abound that the millions of young people who have never managed to land a full-time job might become a subclass permanently doomed to part-time work and paltry wages. "You have people competing for the diminishing number of good jobs, and a lot of kids just don't have the resources to compete," says Scott North, a sociologist at Osaka University. Those trends, he adds, may in turn worsen Japan's declining birthrate. "If you don't have stable employment, it'll be hard to get married, hard to raise children."
Q: 試翻 "Fears abound that ... paltry wages."

3. For Japanese worried about their country's direction, the depressed city of Yubari on the northern island of Hokkaido provides an ominous worst-case scenario. Once a thriving coal-mining town of 130,000, Yubari has shrunk to 13,000 people, with 40% of them 65 years old or over. In the 1980s and '90s town officials tried to stanch the economic decline by borrowing hundreds of millions to remake the city as a tourist destination, only to fail miserably—as Yubari's shuttered amusement park, melon museum and robot museum testify. After racking up over $500 million in debt—roughly 14 times the city's annual tax revenue—Yubari was forced to declare bankruptcy last summer, the first Japanese municipality to do so in 14 years. Late last year the city government announced a harsh fiscal-restructuring plan that would involve raising local taxes to the maximum while cutting public services to the bone. With its crippling debt, aging population and depressed job market, Yubari has come to embody many of Japan's ills. "All the problems that Yubari faces as a city are the same problems that Japan as a country faces," says Tatsuro Sasaya, a Yubari businessman. "It makes me wonder where Japan is headed."
Q: 試翻 "With its crippling debt, ... many of Japan's ills."