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  3. In 19th-century England, craftsmen donned masks and rioted lo force the destruction of textile machines that were stealing their

In 19th-century England, craftsmen donned masks and rioted lo force the destruction of textile machines that were stealing their

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问题     In 19th-century England, craftsmen donned masks and rioted lo force the destruction of textile machines that were stealing their jobs. The rebellion was crushed and the followers of Luddites have come to be viewed as hapless rubes standing in the way of progress. But they had a point: automation causes unemployment.
    The wave of automation now crashing onto the economy looks especially broad and powerful. Although its full impact is unclear, it could cause worker dislocation on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution, experts say. Eventually, technology creates more jobs than it takes away, they add.
(41)______
    Take industrial robots. Over the past 10 years, companies have spent some $ 100 billion installing them. Nearly 1 million are nowr on the job. The investment has proven spectacularly effective. The productivity of these machines has risen about 7 percent a year for the past decade.
(42)______
    These havens aren’t safe anymore. "Smart systems" , computers that can do relatively routine tasks well, are beginning to gobble up jobs ranging from check-out clerks at Home Depot to airline ticket a-gents and hotel desk clerks—even to insurance underwriters and software customer support staff.
(43)______ When the seven "Baby Rells" emerged from the_1984 breakup of AT&T, the companies embarked on a crash course of modernization from analog to digital technology. Over the past two decades, they also shed about half of their jobs. Today’s phone companies use computer-controlled, highly automated systems that often diagnose and even repair themselves. One could argue that 300,000 to 400,000 jobs, some of the best the country has ever created, have disappeared from the telecommunications sector.
(44)______With the advent of e-mail, the letter-delivery business is going to disappear. We’ll see kiosks replacing people, whether it’s at airline counters or anything else. We already have gasoline pumps that take credit cards. You’ll see some replacement in grocery stores, travel agents, tellers in banks, people who do accounting services.
(45)______Three or four years ago, those people were extremely well paid. Now there are fewer jobs in that space, and they’re not quite as well paid as they used to be.
    Policymakers must focus on this shift and its impact on society. They have to figure out what steps are needed to mitigate its ill effects. There’s going to have to be a multifaceted approach to this problem , and it’ s not going to be easy to get a bead on it.
[A] High-value jobs are also being cut. As corporations try to consolidate their computer systems; they’ve winnowed out some highly paid positions.
[B] Although there are no exact data yet on how automation will affect the job market over the next decade, a look at the recent past suggests a not-too-rosy future.
[C] Even a creative field like journalism, job-stealing technology has crept in an automated system could follow set formulas and write routine articles, such as traffic reports and obituaries.
[D] But the human cost has been immense. Automation has eliminated some 10 million jobs, mostly in manufacturing, over the same time period. And the traditional advice to workers— join the computer based "knowledge economy" or move to the service sector—looks suspect.
[E] So far, though, automation doesn’t appear to have had a deep impact on job loss. For exam-pie, despite its airline kiosks and a tough travel economy, Continental says it has seen only a 4 percent decrease in ticket agents since "9. 11".
[F] Similar trends are showing up in the service sector. Businesses have found "you can shift many things to the customer. You can shift many things to a computer".
[G] But in the short term, its effect on job loss is very significant, affecting more sectors of the labor market than in past eras of rapid technological change.
选项
答案A
解析 此处主要考虑与下文的一致。下文讲，三四年前，那些人收入都极高，而现在这一领域的工作机会少多了，而且他们也不如从前收入那么高了。由此可知：这与A中的High—value jobs(高收入丁作)是一致的。A意为：高收入工作也在被裁减。随着公司在巩固其计算机系统方面的努力，它们已裁减掉了一些高薪的职位。
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