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PRODUCTIVITY
生产力
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.
更高的生产力对生活水平的提高和商品及服务价格的降低来说至关重要但是更高的生 产力可能会导致工作机会更少。
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.
战后早期，分析家们便担心自动化会控制制造业，让所有人都失业。那种担忧在一代人身上并未变为现实，其部分原因是机器人和计算机在很多方面并不擅长。如今，接近自动化的制造业正在变成事实。新建的工厂与其所取代的工厂相比，通常只需要一小部分劳动力。同时，如今，办公科技使得几个人便可以做曾经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.
或许会出现一个阶段，那时更高的生产力所带来的成果在工作机会的丧失面前变得黯然失色。然而，即便没有出现那个阶段，快速的科技变化正在引发对未来就业的焦虑：这种焦虑使得人们很难次赏和享受生产力所创造的东西。
