can not afford

基本解释

He continually asked her about the cost of the room. The receptionist replied,“Why do you ask this question, as clearly you can not afford even a fraction of the nightly tariff”.
她的举止使这个农民感到大伤脸面，他接着问她房间的开价情况，小姐不耐烦地说：“你问这个问题干嘛，我看你连半晚上的住宿费都付不起。”
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If he can not afford to pay, he may be granted aid at public expense.
如果他不能支付律师费，可以用公用费用提供帮助。
Together they cost less than one tenth of a per cent of world GDP. If the human race can not afford this, then it doesn’t deserve the epithet ‘human’.
这两个项目的总费用不到全世界GDP的千分之一，如果连这些钱都付不起，我们就该愧对‘人类’的称呼了。

"I think this president believes we can't afford not to." Hopes for a bipartisan compromise on health care appear to be fading.
That is to say not even the best city on Aristotle's account can afford to be without a foreign policy.
这也就说明,就算是亚里士多德笔中的最佳之城,也承受不起没有外交政策的后果。
耶鲁公开课 - 政治哲学导论课程节选
And that right now we can no longer afford to incarcerate, see, more than two million people, and take them not only out of workforce, but keeping them away from information of knowledge of literacy.
现在，我们已没有能力,去限制两亿人口，让他们，脱离劳动力，让他们脱离信息,知识或文化素养。
麻省理工公开课 - 媒体、教育、市场课程节选

We can not afford the overhead associated with the administration of 27 separate payroll systems.
FORBES: Why Government Should Not Be Run Like A Business