The American economic system is organized around a basically private-enterprise, market-or

iented economy in which consumers largely determine what shall be produced by spending their money in the marketplace for those goods and services that they want most. Private businessmen, striving to make profits, produced these goods and services in competition with other businessmen; and the profit motive, operating under competitive pressures, largely determines how these goods and services are produced. Thus, in the American economic system it is the desire of businessmen to maximize profits and the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes, that decide how resources are used to produce it.

An important factor in a market-oriented economy is the mechanism by which consumer demands can be expressed and responded to by producers. In the American economy, this mechanism is provided by a price system, a process in which prices rise and fall in response to relative demands of consumers and supplies offered by seller-producers. If the product is in short supply relative to file demand, the price will be bid up and some consumers will be eliminated from the market. If, on the other hand, producing more of a commodity results in reducing its cost, this will tend to increase the supply offered by seller-producers, which in mm will lower the prize and permit more consumers to buy the product. Thus, price is a more regulating mechanism in the American economic system.

The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are allowed to own productive resources (private property), and they are permitted to hire labor, gain control over natural resources, and produce goods and services for sale at a profit. In the American economy, the concept of private property embraces not only the ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, including the right to determine the price of a produce or to make a free contract with another private individual.

What does the sentence "the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes" mean in Para. 1？

A．Americans are never satisfied with their incomes.

B．Americans tend to overstate their incomes.

C．Americans want to have their incomes increased.

D．Americans want to increase the purchasing power of their incomes.