HAVE A CARD...YOUR SLEEVE. QUESTION IV. READING (30 POINTS) A. REA...

10. Have a card...your sleeve.

QUESTION IV. Reading (30 points)

A. Read the text below and then answer the questions 1 - 8 (10 points)

The World and Its Global Economy

The world as man knows it today is getting smaller and smaller because of technology such as the

Internet and high speed modems. In fact, on March 3, 2005, a man flew entirely around the globe

without refueling or stopping in a one-person jet. The world is changing the world, and as the 21

century continues, the global economy will play a larger and larger role. As Thomas Friedman so

eloquently put it in Lexus and the Olive Tree, globalization is "the inexorable integration of markets,

nation-states, and technologies to a degree never witnessed before."

A With today's technology it is possible for people to solicit business from the far side of the globe. B

A company like Dell Computers can order parts from several different countries, take shipment in North

Carolina where the new computers will be assembled, and then ship them to all regions of the globe . C

An American oil firm can do a satellite survey in Siberia for oil deposits and then contract with a

Russian oil firm to drill the actual well, while the petroleum engineer, acting as the project supervisor,

remains in the US and runs the project by using a computer, a high speed Internet connection, and a

cellular telephone for quick questions. D

A global economy poses some serious problems. If a company doesn't act fast enough, it can lose, and

if the company loses heavily, what will happen to the employees working for the company, and then in

turn what will happen to the stores that depend on those employees buying their goods? As can be seen,

there is a definite trickle-down effect. How is the child who is about to graduate from high school

supposed to decide on what career field to enter? A career field that is here today might be gone long

before the child can graduate from college, so not only does it become vital that a person gain the

needed knowledge to enter a given career field, but the person also needs to learn how to learn. Learning

how to learn may prove to be even more necessary than the knowledge needed to enter a given career

field. A person who is good at learning how to learn can quickly adapt to changes in the global economy

by quickly preparing to enter other career fields if his job is here today, but gone in the morning.

If the world turns into a global economy, a person will need to be able to get along and work with

people from different cultural backgrounds. However, unless a person has spent time living in different

parts of the world, this might be hard to do. While many students from foreign countries, especially the

Asian countries, come to the US to earn a graduate degree, how many students from the US spend even

a semester abroad studying in another country? The answer to this question is of course a very small

percentage.

While individuals from some of foreign countries and some individuals from the US and the US

economy will adjust to globalization, will the rest of the world? Mass media are more than willing to

continue to stir the pot of controversy as they not only have to learn how to report the positive news, but

also dole out a continuous stream of negative news. When a person in a developing country sees all the

cars on the streets of Beijing, of course that person wants a car so he can show his neighbor how wealthy

he is, and all this does is promote unneeded consumption. Why does the person who has nowhere to go

and no money to spend for travel want to own a car? The simple answer is because the media paint

owning a car as a symbol of wealth and it is human nature to want to become wealthy or at least to

appear wealthy.

On the positive side, as prices rise due to increased demands on scarce resources, there will be an

incentive to find affordable alternatives. For example, as the price of oil rises and along with it the price

of a gallon of gasoline, a point will be reached at which people are no longer willing to purchase

gasoline so they can drive their cars, and they will demand both alternative transportation methods and

cars which use another source of energy. A current online survey says $2.50 per gallon of gasoline is the

point at which the people in the US will start making demands on the auto manufacturer, which will

open up new career fields in a few countries that have the technology needed to meet the demands;

however, people around the globe will work together on it.