2022届二轮复习高考英语专练： 阅读理解文章大意（含解析）

2022届二轮复习高考英语专练： 文章大意 1 In previous recessions (经济衰退), billionaires were hit along with the rest of us; it took almost three years for Forbes’s 400 richest people to recover from losses caused in 2008’s Great Recession. But in the coronavirus recession of 2020, most billionaires have gotten richer than ever before. Billionaires increased their new billions just as millions of other Americans ran into terrible financial problems. More than 20 million people lost their jobs at the start of the pandemic. Food banks across the country are preparing for another great increase in demand. Why are American billionaires doing so well while so many other Americans suffer? People may find part of the reasons from the following fact. Stocks (股票) are overwhelmingly owned by the wealthy, and the stock market has recovered from its early-pandemic depths much more quickly than other parts of the economy. But some billionaires are also benefiting from economic and technological trends that were accelerated by the pandemic. Among these are the owners and investors of retail giants like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree and Dollar General, which have reported huge profits this year while many of their smaller competitors were defeated completely as the coronavirus spread. Then there are companies that have bet on the rapid digitization of everything Eric Yuan, the chief executive of Zoom, became a billionaire in 2019. Now he is worth almost $20 billion. Dan Gilbert, the chairman of Quicken Loans, was worth less than $7 billion in March, now he commands more than $43 billion. But there is a great deal of stratification (层化) even among billionaires—richer billionaires got even richer in 2020 than the poorer ones did. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s funder, was worth about $113 billion at the start of the pandemic. Now he is worth $182 billion. Two years ago, Bezos was the only “centibillionaire” on earth—the trendy neologism (a new word) for people whose wealth exceeds (超过) ￥100 billion. 1. What does the author mainly tell us in the passage? A. Food banks are not enough in the United States. B. The richest kept getting richer even in the pandemic. C. The stock market recovered before the pandemic started. D. 400 richest people recovered from losses in the pandemic. 2. What is “part of the reasons” that is implied in Paragraph 2? A. The American inequality. B. The recovery of stock market. C. The effect of the pandemic. D. The food shortage across the country. 3. What is one of the changes during the pandemic? A. The decline of digital games. B. More money lent to people by banks. C. The trend of technology acceleration. D. High profit earned by smaller companies. 4. Why does the author refer to “centibillionaire” as a “neologism”? A. It is a new title in the stock market after the recession. B. It is a new way of solution to poverty through the world. C. It is a newly established company during the pandemic. D. It is a new term for peo ... ...