江苏省2011-2014年高考英语真题汇编议论文阅读（2014江苏）BHowever wealthy we may be, we can never find enough hours in the day to do everything we want. Economics deals with this problem through the concept of opportunity cost, which simply refers to whether someones time or money could be better spent on something else.Every hour of our time has a value. For every hour we work at one job we could quite easily be doing another, or be sleeping or watching a film. Each of these options has a different opportunity costnamely, what they cost us in missed opportunities.Say you intend to watch a football match but the tickets are expensive and it will take you a couple of hours to get to and from the stadium. Why not, you might reason, watch the game from home and use the leftover money and time to have dinner with friends? Thisthe alternative use of your cash and timeis the opportunity cost.For economists, every decision is made by knowledge of what one must forgoin terms of money and enjoymentin order to take it up. By knowing precisely what you are receiving and what you are missing out on, you ought to be able to make better-informed, more reasonable decisions. Consider that most famous economic rule of all: theres no such thing as a free lunch. Even if someone offers to take you out to lunch for free, the time you will spend in the restaurant still costs you something in terms of forgone opportunities.Some people find the idea of opportunity cost extremely discouraging: imagine spending your entire life calculating whether your time would be better spent elsewhere doing something more profitable or enjoyable. Yet, in a sense its human nature to do precisely thatwe assess the advantages and disadvantages of decisions all the time.In the business world, a popular phrase is “value for money.” People want their cash to go as far as possible. However, another is fast obtaining an advantage: “value for time.” The biggest restriction on our resources is the number of hours we can devote to something, so we look to maximize the return we get on our investment of time. By reading this passage you are giving over a bit of your time which could be spent doing other activities, such as sleeping and eating. In return, however, this passage will help you to think like an economist, closely considering the opportunity cost of each of your decisions.【小题1】According to the passage, the concept of “opportunity cost” is applied to _.A. making more money B. taking more opportunitiesC. reducing missed opportunities D. weighing the choice of opportunities【小题2】The “leftover . time” in Paragraph 3 probably refers to the time _.A. spared for watching the match at home B. taken to have dinner with friendsC. spent on the way to and from the match D. saved from not going to watch the match【小题3】What are forgone opportunities?A. Opportunities you forget in decision-making. B. Opportunities you give up for better ones.C. Opportunities you miss accidentally. D. Opportunities you make up for.【答案】58. D 59. C 60. B（2013江苏）BWeve considered several ways of paying to cut in line: hiring line standers, buying tickets from scalpers (票贩子), or purchasing line-cutting privileges directly from, say, an airline or an amusement park. Each of these deals replaces the morals of the queue (waiting your turn) with the morals of the market (paying a price for faster service).Markets and queuespaying and waitingare two different ways of allocating things, and each is appropriate to different activities. The morals of the queue, “First come, first served, have an egalitarian (平等主义的) appeal. They tell us to ignore privilege, power, and deep pockets.The principle seems right on playgrounds and at bus stops. But the morals of the queue do not govern all occasions. If I put my house up for sale, I have no duty to accept the first offer that comes along, simply because its the first. Selling my house and waiting for a bus are different activities, properly governed by different standards.Sometimes standards change, and it is unclear which principle should apply. Think of the recorded message you hear, played over and over, as you wait on hold when calling your bank: “Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” This is essential for the morals of the queue. Its as if the company is trying to ease our impatience with fairness.But dont take the recorded message too seriously. Today, some peoples calls are answered faster than others. Call center technology enables companies to “score” incoming calls and to give faster service to those that come from rich places. You might call this telephonic queue jumping.Of course, markets and queues are not the only ways of allocating things. Some goods we distribute by merit, others by need, still others by chance. However, the tendency of markets to replace queues, and other non-market ways of allocating goods is so common in mod