Word: problems
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1980
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...robot revolution originates in American industry's most fundamental problem: the stagnation in productivity. From 1947 to 1965, U.S. productivity increased by 3.4% a year, but the growth rate dipped to 2.3% in the following decade, then dropped to below 1% in the late 1970s and down to -.9% last year. (Japan's productivity growth, by contrast, has been climbing at an average annual rate of about 7.3%.) Now that economic planners are trying to work out methods of "reindustrializing" the U.S., they can see in the robot a major answer to those productivity declines...
Aside from the specific problem of lost jobs, Shaiken warns of more intangible difficulties. "The use of robots has social costs that are not being addressed by anyone in the U.S. today," he says. "By designing a production process that minimizes human participation, you freeze out the worker's control and you freeze out his initiative. We often overlook the impact of robots on the jobs that remain. Today, if a worker assembling components has a daily quota of 100 units to fill, he can, for example, work flat out and assemble 60 in the first half...
...fervent belief," says Engelberger, "that any increase in productivity is always good. The problem is to decide what to do with the blessings. Do we want to have a shorter work week? That's one of the possibilities. Would we like clean air and water...
...felt that President was treated fairly by the press." In Powell's view, the man in the White House is inevitably locked in a tumultuous, adversarial relationship with the reporters who cover him. "I don't know whose fault it is, but it's a problem that has to be looked at," he says. "It would be simple if you could say the problem is that reporters are a bunch of jerks, or don't like Southern Democrats or whatever. That is not the nature of the problem. It goes to the whole issue...
Calling such indoor smog an emerging health problem, the Comptroller General has cited half a dozen harmful substances detected in unusual quantities in super-sealed buildings. Among them: carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, both byproducts of smoking, gas stoves and leaky furnaces; the radioactive gas radon, which results from the natural decay of radium, an element found in soil, rocks and other building materials; and numerous particles of dust, soot and asbestos...