跟讀練習: Why is everything getting so expensive? - 通過影片學習英語口語

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on my way to the grocery store mentally preparing myself for the sticker shock here

we are wish me luck got my diapers

it might be something else for you for me it's diapers is really where

like i notice inflation the most one of the things that's interesting about this particular period of inflation

that we're in is this is a worldwide phenomenon hi folks my question is about inflation.

What is the real cause?

Is it just COVID or we have others to blame?

Thank you.

Diapers in the U .S., food in Ghana, and home prices in India.

What actually caused all this inflation?

And is there something we can do about it?

If you watch cable news in the U .S., you will see one explanation for inflation that gets a lot of attention.

There's still too much money chasing too few goods.

Too much money chasing too few goods.

Say I have a car dealership.

Say we're in a global pandemic.

Factories are shutting down periodically and I'm just not able to keep as many cars on my lot.

My inventory is low.

But at the same time, I have customers willing to spend money on my cars.

My inventory starts to dwindle and now there's more customers than there are cars.

So I can just increase the price.

Too much money chasing too few goods.

Economists like this guy, Larry Summers, he's been sounding the alarm bell about this kind of inflation from the beginning.

I am much more worried that we'll have inflation.

This is the least responsible macroeconomic policies we've had in the last 40 years.

He is talking about those pandemic relief checks.

Before we can figure out if Larry Summers is right,

We need to take a closer look at exactly how inflation is measured in the first place.

Once a month, the U .S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics puts together what it calls a market basket.

These data are specific to the U .S., but you can find similar numbers around the world.

The BLS looks at the prices for different goods and services like housing, electricity, apparel, prescription drugs, bakery products, dairy.

They look at the price we're paying this month

and then compare it to the price for same good or service last month or last year.

Then they calculate a single percentage that captures all of that change.

And that's the Consumer Price Index, or CPI.

And it's true, the Consumer Price Index has been rising steadily for the past couple of years.

Here's when those stimulus checks went out.

But now let's take a closer look at some of the specific goods and services that make up the CPI.

Some things are way more expensive than this time last year.

Like fuel oil, airline fares, gas, baked goods, dairy products.

But there is some stuff that's held fairly steady.

In a normal healthy economy, the Federal Reserve expects for inflation to be about 2 % a year.

And for stuff like clothing, prescription drugs, and education, prices are only slightly above that 2 % mark.

For used cars and trucks, gasoline and communication, that's your phone plan, internet, streaming, prices are actually lower than this time last year.

It seems a bit more complicated than simply people have too much money.

If that were the only problem, wouldn't everything be more expensive?

So unfortunately for me, the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't actually track the price of diapers as part of the CPI.

But I did find a private research firm, Nielsen IQ, that does.

So Nielsen looks at something called the unit price.

Basically they take the box of diapers, divide it by how many diapers are in the box, and that gives you the unit price.

They get a bunch of different brands and then come up with this average.

So in 2019, the average unit price for diapers was 16 .1 cents.

If prices had gone up at that expected 2 % annual inflation rate, January of 2023 would have seen me paying 17 .4 cents per diaper.

But of course, that's not what the last few years have looked like.

If the price of diapers had increased at the same rate as the CPI, I would be paying 19 cents per diaper in January of 2023.

But no, no, no, no, I am currently paying 21 cents per diaper, an increase of over 30%.

So why is it that the price of diapers is rising so much faster than the price of all these other goods?

You can think of the cost of a business in a couple of ways, right?

There's the wages that you pay for workers.

There are investments in capital, in the machinery itself.

And all of that adds up to the cost of production.

And then there's the cost that you actually sell the good at.

And the difference between those two costs are called a markup.

One of the things that makes it difficult to report on inflation is that reporters and consumers,

we don't know how much it costs companies to pay their workers.

We don't know how much it costs them to import the materials that they need.

But we can guess.

Take labor costs, for example.

We know that from 2019 to 2023, the average hourly wage for someone working in manufacturing rose by about 17%.

Now, that is faster than what you would expect under normal 2 % annual inflation.

But when you consider the fact that corporations have successfully kept wages

so low in the years leading up to that point that they were actually declining relative to inflation,

this recent bump starts to look more like a kind of return to normalcy.

Okay, but what about the cost of materials?

I went to the Pampers website and looked at what goes into making a diaper.

It turns out this stuff is made out of wood

and these are all plastics which are made by refining petroleum in slightly different ways.

According to the Federal Reserve's producer price index, the average price for both of these materials, wood pulp and plastic products,

has risen significantly over the past five years, but both of these rising input costs still don't completely explain the price hike in diapers.

One of the reasons I really wanted to talk to Rakeen is

that she and her colleagues have listened to hundreds and hundreds of hours of earnings calls.

What we found is big corporations who are jacking up prices beyond what their production costs would justify.

These are some transcripts of those earnings calls that Rakeen and her colleagues have been listening to.

The CEO of Hostess Brands, for example, says of these price hikes, consumers get used to it.

When all prices go up, it helps.

A Tyson Foods executive claimed that price increases for beef more than offset the higher costs.

Visa's CEO says that, historically, inflation has been a positive for us.

All three of these corporations experienced record profits over the past three years.

But what they did with those profits is instructive.

They paid that money out to their shareholders and raised prices for the rest of us.

So we have our three theories for this current moment of inflation.

Too much money floating around, supply shocks, and massive markups.

Unfortunately, it's probably going to be months

or maybe even years before we have all of the data necessary to figure out

which one of these three explanations holds the most weight.

But there are still things we can do to help bring prices down.

When we think of inflation in a really singular way,

I think that really limits the vast panoply of tools that we actually have to fight this problem.

100

Let's start with a tool that the Federal Reserve has already busted out, raising interest rates.

101

The way that works is it makes it more expensive for companies to borrow money,

102

which makes it harder for them to invest in new projects and hire new people.

103

So far, the Fed has raised interest rates eight times, and the unemployment rate has stayed pretty low.

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But that could change if the Fed keeps raising rates.

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The last time inflation got super high, back in the early 80s, the Fed did huge interest rate hikes, and inflation did go down.

106

But look what happened to unemployment.

107

It shot way up.

108

By 1982, 1 in 10 people were out of work.

109

In the last month of 2022, prices were starting to come down in some key areas.

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Dairy, fruits and veggies, airline fares.

111

Prices for these two items, gasoline and fuel oil, are way down.

112

And the reason likely has very little to do with raising interest rates.

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Over the past 12 months, President Biden released millions of barrels of oil from the U .S.

114

emergency stockpile, which increased global supply and drove down the price.

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There's precedent for doing this in other areas of the economy.

116

In 1939, U .S.

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President Franklin Roosevelt asked

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Congress for nearly $900 million to help the airline industry quadruple their output.

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Ships, planes, tanks, guns.

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That is our purpose and our pledge.

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Something Rakeen told me about diapers got me thinking about a third way we might start bringing prices down.

122

Turns out that somewhere between 70 % and 80 % of all the diapers produced in the U .S.

123

are made by two companies.

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This honestly threw me a little bit, but then I went back and looked at some of that footage that I shot in the grocery store.

125

Loves, Pampers, Ninjamas — those are all made by Procter & Gamble.

126

Huggies, Pull -Ups, Good Nights — all made by Kimberly Clark.

127

So while it looks like parents have a lot of choices in the diaper aisle, we actually don't.

128

Policymakers have allowed really rampant deregulation that has facilitated these companies having

129

so much power in a way that they can jack up prices without any cost to them.

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That supply dial and that corporate power dial, we've let them get dusty.

131

We do not, and we never did, have to throw workers under the bus in order to bring down prices.

132

I'll see you next time.

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本課的詞彙與口語要點

這節口語課以影片“Why is everything getting so expensive?”為素材。影片中反覆出現的詞有：price, inflation, diaper, cost, rate。這段影片共有 124 個句子、1663 個單詞可供跟讀。講話部分時長為 9:33。說話人語速自然，每分鐘約 174 個詞，接近日常對話。 84% 的單詞屬於英語最常用的 3,000 詞，其餘的詞建議在練習前先學一下。

影片中的重點詞彙

影片中 15 個值得學習的單詞，附發音和釋義：

單詞	發音	釋義
inflation 名詞	/ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/	通貨膨脹 /通貨膨脹, 通脹 /通脹
chase 動詞	/t͡ʃeɪs/	追逐, 追
wage 名詞	/weɪd͡ʒ/	工資 /工資, 薪金
worker 名詞	/ˈwɝ.kɚ/	工人, 工作者
dairy 名詞	/ˈdɛə.ɹi/	乳製品 /乳製品
airline 名詞	/ˈɛɹˌlaɪn/	航空公司
hike 名詞	/haɪk/	遠足 /遠足
shock 名詞	/ʃɔk/	衝擊 /衝擊
explanation 名詞	/ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/	解釋 /解釋, 說明 /說明
earnings 名詞		收益, 收入
unemployment 名詞	/ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/	失業 /失業
inventory 名詞	/ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/	庫存 /庫存, 儲存 /儲存
prescription 名詞	/pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/	藥方 /藥方, 處方 /處方
colleague 名詞	/ˈkɒliːɡ/	同事, 同僚
fare 名詞	/ˈfɛə/	車費 /車費

影片中出現的短語動詞

單詞	發音	釋義
figure out 動詞		弄清楚
turn out 動詞		原來 /原來
come up with 動詞		想出, 提出
go back 動詞		回去, 返回
go down 動詞		下降, 下去
go out 動詞		出, 出口
go up 動詞		上昇 /上升, 上去
make up 動詞	/ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/	組成 /組成

影片中的語法

說話人最常用的結構，並附上影片中的原話：

結構	影片中的用法
現在完成進行時 have/has been + -ing — 以前開始、現在仍在繼續的動作	he's been sounding · has been rising · have been listening
現在完成時 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去發生但與現在仍有關聯的事	we've had · have looked · has risen
被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼，而不是誰做的	is measured · are called · is made

需要注意的發音

說話人用了 13 次縮略和弱讀形式，例如 don't, we're, we've。請按聽到的簡短形式來說。

“sh” 和 “zh” 音: inflation /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/, shock /ʃɔk/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, prescription /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/
長單詞——注意重音位置: explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, unemployment /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/

中文母語者容易讀錯的音：

/v/ — 不要讀成 /w/，上齒輕觸下唇: inventory /ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/, vast /væst/, relative /ˈɹɛl.ə.tɪv/, invest /ɪnˈvɛst/, divide /dɪˈvaɪd/
詞尾子音 — 要讀清楚，後面不要加母音: chase /t͡ʃeɪs/, wage /weɪd͡ʒ/, hike /haɪk/, shock /ʃɔk/, unemployment /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/
/r/ 和 /l/ 的區別: airline /ˈɛɹˌlaɪn/, relative /ˈɹɛl.ə.tɪv/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, alarm /əˈlɑɹm/, barrel /ˈbæɹəl/

如何用這段影片練習

先完整聽一遍影片，不要開口，記下不認識的單詞。
先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟讀，熟練之後再回到正常速度。
錄下自己的聲音並與原聲對比，特別注意 inflation, chase, wage 這類單詞。

什麼是跟讀法？

跟讀法 (Shadowing) 是一種有科學依據的語言學習技巧，最初開發用於專業口譯員的培訓，並由多語言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。這個方法簡單而強大：您在聽英語母語原聲的同時立即大聲重複——就像是一個延遲1-2秒緊跟說話者的影子。與被動聽力或語法練習不同，跟讀法強迫您的大腦和口腔肌肉同時處理並模模擬實的講話模式。研究表明它能顯著提高發音準確性，語調，節奏，連讀，聽力理解和口語流利度——使其成為雅思口語備考和真實英語交流最有效的方法之一。

影子跟讀法: 閱讀完整分步指南 →

跟讀練習: Why is everything getting so expensive? - 通過影片學習英語口語

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