В. И. Иванов - Английский язык в экономике, бухучете и банковско-финансовой деятельности

The American performance was exceptional. In his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) Thomas Malthus offered a grim assessment of the consequences that would follow an increase in output. Population would respond by growing and would consume the additional output, reducing the level of living to what it had been before. The pressure of population on resources seemed relentless to Malthus, and he expected that war, pestilence, and starvation would provide the means of reducing it. American history offered testimony of a different kind: it was possible to have it both ways – more people and more resources, too. Technological advances would enable developed countries throughout the world to respond similarly to Malthus’s predictions.

In the closing decades of the twentieth century the American economy, as before, alternated between periods of expansion (for example, 1963–1968, 1976–1980, 1983-) and contraction (for example, 1969–1970, 1974–1975, and 1980–1982), without, however, sinking into a deep and prolonged depression like those of the 1870s and 1930s (although some of the contractions – now called recessions – were severe, for example, those of 1974–1975 and 1980–1982). Built-in stabilizers put in place by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s – for example, old age and survivors’ and unemployment insurance – provided cushions during periods of falling demand. The uses of monetary and fiscal policies, too, were far better understood than before.

Nevertheless, the prospects of long-term economic growth are beset by problems far more grievous than those of earlier years. Although these problems are too numerous and complex for exploration here – they include a massive federal debt, large annual budget and trade deficits, and relatively low rates of domestic saving and investment in research and development – we can single out one because of the substantial effect it exerts on economic growth.

In recent years the rate of increase in manufacturing productivity – measured as output per unit of labor and capital combined – has been slowing down. From an annual average of 3.4 percent between 1948 and 1960 the rate fell to 2.3 percent from 1966 to 1973, to 1 percent from 1973 to 1977, and to 0.4 percent between 1977 and 1978. In 1979 and 1980 growth stopped altogether and productivity actually declined. Since then small recoveries have not overcome the long-term downward trend. The late nineteenth – and twentieth-century successor to Great Britain as the «workshop of the world,» the United States now finds its competitive edge dulled in the international marketplace while at the same time faced with intensified foreign competition at home. Indeed, by 1980 foreign-made goods were competing with more than 70 percent of those manufactured in the United States. Addressing this condition, and the budget and trade problems with which it is intimately connected, will be one of the great challenges of the 1990s and beyond.

Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth: An Essay in Social Causation (1965); Simon Kuznets, Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure and Spread (1966); Simon Kuznets, Postwar Economic Growth: Four Lectures (1964).

Stuart Bruchey

EXERCISES

Exercise 1. Words and expressions. Provide Russian equivalents.

output of goods and services

per capita

Gross national product (gnp)

growth at a retarded rate

Net national product (nnp)

output per capita

double counting

product per capita

current prices

manufacturing productivity

constant prices

downward trend

material welfare

foreign-made goods

rate of growth

intimately connected

Exercise 2. Answer the following questions.

1. What do economists mean when speaking of «economic growth»? 2. What is national product? 3. What is the difference between GNP and NNP? 4. Is national income related to national product? 5. How do economists measure national income? 6. How can you describe growth cycles in a country’s output? 7. How are surges in economic growth explained? 8. What were Thomas Maltus’ views on the relationship between increase in output and population growth? 9. What problems influence prospects of economic growth in a country now? 10. What can be said about the rate of increase in manufacturing productivity in the U.S. in the late 1940s till 1980s?

Exercise 3.Translate into English.

1. Национальный доход – денежный эквивалент национального продукта – можно измерять несколькими способами. 2. Каждый из этих способов отражает различные стороны процесса производства, распределения и потребления продукции в государстве, и все они применяются для различных целей. 3. Изменения в национальном доходе можно измерять в постоянных либо в текущих ценах. 4. В целях исследования экономического роста желательно применять постоянные цены. 5. В расчетах экономического роста для определения изменений материального благосостояния необходимо учитывать два дополнительных требования. 6. Самые высокие темпы экономического роста на душу населения в странах Юго-Восточной Азии. 7. Рост производства не должен быть временным. 8. В данных о производстве продукции в различных странах ученые обнаружили циклы роста (часто называемые «долговременными колебаниями») меняющейся продолжительности, некоторые 10 лет, другие 60 лет, а некоторые даже 100 лет. 9. Колебание – это изменение темпов роста. 10. В фазе спада темпы роста чрезвычайно низкие или отрицательные. 11. В каждом из долговременных колебаний ученые обнаружили период подъема. 12. Следует подчеркнуть, что долговременные колебания имели место не в общем объеме производства (который рос без существенных перерывов), а скорее в темпах роста этого общего объема производства.

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