評論
打印
PRODUCTIVITY
生產力
Higher productivity is essential to rising living standards and to the declining prices of goods and services. But higher productivity may lead to fewer jobs.
更高的生產力對生活水平的提高和商品及服務價格的降低來說至關重要但是更高的生 產力可能會導致工作機會更少。
Early in the postwar era, analysts fretted that automation would take over manufacturing, throwing everyone out of work. That fear went unrealized for a generation, in part because robots and computers weren't good at much. Today, near-automated manufacturing is becoming a reality. Newly built factories often require only a fraction of the work force of the plants they replace. Office technology, meanwhile, now allows a few to do what once required a whole hive of worker bees.
戰后早期，分析家們便擔心自動化會控制制造業，讓所有人都失業。那種擔憂在一代人身上并未變為現實，其部分原因是機器人和計算機在很多方面并不擅長。如今，接近自動化的制造業正在變成事實。新建的工廠與其所取代的工廠相比，通常只需要一小部分勞動力。同時，如今，辦公科技使得幾個人便可以做曾經需要一群人才能完成的工作。
There may come a point when the gains from higher productivity pale before the job losses. But even if that point does not come, rapid technological change is instilling anxiety about future employment: anxiety that makes it hard to appreciate and enjoy what productivity create.
或許會出現一個階段，那時更高的生產力所帶來的成果在工作機會的喪失面前變得黯然失色。然而，即便沒有出現那個階段，快速的科技變化正在引發對未來就業的焦慮：這種焦慮使得人們很難次賞和享受生產力所創造的東西。
