首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
A Workaholic Economy For the first century or so of the industrial revolution, increased productivity led to decreases in wo
A Workaholic Economy For the first century or so of the industrial revolution, increased productivity led to decreases in wo
admin
2012-12-13
98
问题
A Workaholic Economy
For the first century or so of the industrial revolution, increased productivity led to decreases in working hours. Employees who had been putting in 12-hour days, six days a week, found their time on the job shrinking to 10 hours daily, then, finally to eight hours, five days a week. only a generation ago social planners worried about what people would do with all this new-found free time. In the US, at least, it seems they need not have bothered. Although the output per hour of work has more than doubled since 1945, leisure seems reserved largely for the unemployed and underemployed. Those who work full-time spend as much time on the job as they did at the end of World War Ⅱ. In fact, working hours have increased noticeably since 1970--perhaps because real wages have stagnated that year. Bookstores now abound with manuals describing how to manage time and cope with stress.
There are several reasons for lost leisure. Since 1970, companies have responded to improvements in the business climate by having employees work overtime rather than by hiring extra personnel, says. economist Juliet B. , Scholar of Harvard University. Indeed, the current economic recovery has gained a certain amount of notoriety for its "jobless" nature: increased production has been almost entirely decoupled from employment. Some firms are even down sizing as their profits climb. "All things being equal, we’d be better off spreading around the work," observes labor economist Ronald G. Ehrenberg of Cornell University.
Yet a host of factors pushes employers to hire fewer workers for more hours and, at the same time, compels workers to spend more time on the job. Most of those incentives involve what Ehrenberg calls the structure of compensation: quirks in the way salaries and benefits are organized that make it more profitable to ask 40 employees to labor an extra hour each than to hire one more worker to do the same 40-hour job.
Professional and managerial employees supply the most obvious lesson along these lines. once people are on salary, their cost to a firm is the same whether they spend 35 hours a week in the office or 70. Diminishing returns may eventually set in as overworked employees lose efficiency or leave for more arable pastures. But in the short run, the employer’s incentive is Clear.
Even hourly employees receive benefits--such as pension and contributions and medical insurance--that are not tied to the number of hours they work. Therefore, it is more profitable for employers to work their existing employees harder.
For all that employees complain about long hours, they, too, have reasons not to trade money for leisure. "People who work reduced hours pay a huge penalty in career terms," Scholar maintains. “It’s taken as a negative signal about their commitment to the firm.” Bailyn of Massachusetts Institute of Technology adds that many corporate managers find it difficult to measure the contribution of their underlings to a firm’s well-being, so they use the number of hours worked as a proxy for output. "Employees know this,’ she says, and they adjust their behavior accordingly.
"Although the image of the good worker is the one whose life belongs to the company," Bailyn says, "it doesn’t fit the facts.’ She cites both quantitative and qualitative studies that show increased productivity for part-time workers: they make better use of the time they have, and they are less likely to succumb to fatigue in stressful jobs. Companies that employ more workers for less time also gain from the resulting redundancy, she asserts. "The extra people can cover the contingencies that you know are going to happen, such as when crises take people away from the workplace. "Positive experiences with reduced hours have begun to change the more-is-better culture at some companies, Scholar reports.
Larger firms, in particular, appear to be more willing to experiment with flexible working arrangement.
It may take even more than changes in the financial and cultural structures of employment for workers successfully to trade increased productivity and money for leisure time, Scholar contends. She says the U.S. market for goods has become skewed by the assumption of full-time, two-career households. Automobile makers no longer manufacture cheap models, and developers do not build the tiny. bungalows that served the first post-war generation of home buyers. Not even the humblest household object is made without a microprocessor. U. S. goods are appropriate only for high incomes and long hours.
What can we infer from the last paragraph?
选项
A、Low-income workers with time-consuming jobs will enjoy a fruitful material life in the USA.
B、Low-income workers with more leisure time will enjoy a fruitful material life in the USA.
C、High-income jobs workers with time-consuming jobs will enjoy a fruitful material life in the USA.
D、High-income workers with more leisure time will enjoy a fruitful material life in the USA.
答案
C
解析
从本文最后一段可以得出什么结论。原文最后一段大意是美国人对物质需要的市场全被扭曲了,汽车制造商们不再生产廉价的汽车,而房地产开发商也不再建造小平房了,甚至最便宜的家庭用品也非要设计成带微处理器的。美国的物质只适用于高收入和长时间工作的社会。所以选项C) 符合题意。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/Qew7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Japanisgoingthroughacomplexnationalidentitycrisis.Thatmaybenobadthing,saysanewbookbyanAmericanresearcher.
A、Heusuallytalksquietly.B、Heusuallyassignshomework.C、Hedidn’tteachclasstoday.D、Henoticedthatthestudentsdidn’t
Theworkonatmosphericchlorofluorocarbons(氯氟化碳)ledeventuallytoaglobalCFCbanthatsavedusfromozone-layerreduction.
Languageislearnedprimarilythroughcommunicationwithotherpeople.Researchshowsthatthemorecommunicationchildren【S1】__
Languageislearnedprimarilythroughcommunicationwithotherpeople.Researchshowsthatthemorecommunicationchildren【S1】__
ThismaycomeasnosurprisetoresidentsofNewYorkCityandotherbigurbancenters:Livingtherecanbebadforyourmental
A、Theymayattackhumanbeingsinthefarm.B、Theycausedabortionoffarmanimals.C、Theydestroythefarmcrops.D、Theyhavev
Thepointoffactoryfarmingischeapmeat,madepossiblebyconfininglargenumbersofanimalsinsmallspaces.Perhapsthegre
AmongthecriticismsoftheObamaadministration’sbankrescueproposalisthatthegovernmentwillprovideupto$1trillionin
AmongthecriticismsoftheObamaadministration’sbankrescueproposalisthatthegovernmentwillprovideupto$1trillionin
随机试题
下列哪种物质形成的渗透压对引起血管升压素释放无作用
可以端菜、扫地、唱歌跳舞,可以跟孩子做游戏、陪老人谈天说地……在本届机器人世界杯上,各式各样的服务机器人成为最吸引眼球的明星。多位业内专家预测,面向家庭和个人的服务机器人,将超越工业机器人,成为下一个爆发式增长的市场。以下哪项如果为真,最能质疑上
下列哪一选项是2012年《刑事诉讼法修正案》新增加的规定内容?(2012年试卷二第35题)
表象的首要特征是()。
学校心理教育的中心应该是心理矫治教育。()
为分析人室盗窃案件的发案规律,某市公安局民警小张调取了本市第三季度入室盗窃案件数据、流入本市的盗窃前科重点人活动数据,制作了相应的数据分析图表(见下图)。根据图1至图6,以下研判意见可取的有()。(多选)
请分析GNP与GDP的不同。
Inmanycompanies,aproductmanager—【B1】______--isresponsibleforplanningrelatedtonewproductsaswellastoestablished
Settingfirestopublicbuildings-highlydangerousandpunishablebylawallovertheworld.
______referstoactualspeech,thespeechactsthataremadepossiblebythesystemofthelanguage.
最新回复
(
0
)