Einjähriges Berufskolleg Englisch |
Aufgabe 1 |
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Hauptprüfung 1995 |
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AUFGABE | ||
JOBS | Zeile | |
For
more than two decades, from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, the industrialized world enjoyed an unprecedented period of rapid growth and rising productivity that had economies running at full steam. Trade grew, incomes rose, living standards soared and in Europe, the United States and Japan, practically everyone who wanted a job could have one. |
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Look
at us now. Our incomes have not increased any longer. Governments are running chronic deficits. And most miserable of all, millions of people can no longer find the work they need. Nearly half of Europe's 20 million unemployed have been out of work for more than a year. |
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Long-term
unemployment burdens government social programs, reduces tax revenue, wastes human capital, increases income disparities and robs people of their sense of self-worth. It fuels anti-immigrant sentiment and social unrest. If it persists, countries can lose the skills they need to compete. "We are squandering our people." says one EC Employment Commissioner. "There is somebody unemployed on every street, and on some streets, there are dozens." |
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Millions
of unemployed workers are out of a job today because the work they once did is now unnecessary. Some of them made or did things we no longer need. Some of their tasks have been taken over or made easier by machines. Those jobs are gone forever. |
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But
even as technology destroys jobs, it has also created them. How? Two ways. First, because people are needed to create the new technology and make it work. Second, and more important, because technology boosts productivity, making it possible to get more output from less work. Increased productivity boosts profits and increases wages that create demand - and thus new jobs. |
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For
some, the changes lying ahead will be difficult: frequent retraining, shortened careers, less security. For others they will offer new opportunities and responsibilities. In the meantime, for all workers it means instabtility and uncertainty. |
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Adapted from: Newsweek, June 14, 1993 |