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    Reading Passage

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    Reizel Joyce Garcia
    This document summarizes key issues related to rising unemployment globally. It notes that rapid technological change and increased international competition are damaging job markets in major industrialized countries. While international trade and finance have boomed over the past decade, productivity has decreased and unemployment has increased in places like Europe and the United States. The document discusses several potential explanations for rising unemployment, including the impact of developing countries, new technologies that replace some jobs while creating demand for other skills, and immigration trends. It concludes that nations should pursue economic policies that allow working people to earn a living wage above poverty levels.

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    Reading Passage

    Uploaded by

    Reizel Joyce Garcia
    39 views1 page
    This document summarizes key issues related to rising unemployment globally. It notes that rapid technological change and increased international competition are damaging job markets in major industrialized countries. While international trade and finance have boomed over the past decade, productivity has decreased and unemployment has increased in places like Europe and the United States. The document discusses several potential explanations for rising unemployment, including the impact of developing countries, new technologies that replace some jobs while creating demand for other skills, and immigration trends. It concludes that nations should pursue economic policies that allow working people to earn a living wage above poverty levels.

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    This document summarizes key issues related to rising unemployment globally. It notes that rapid technological change and increased international competition are damaging job markets in major industrialized countries. While international trade and finance have boomed over the past decade, productivity has decreased and unemployment has increased in places like Europe and the United States. The document discusses several potential explanations for rising unemployment, including the impact of developing countries, new technologies that replace some jobs while creating demand for other skills, and immigration trends. It concludes that nations should pursue economic policies that allow working people to earn a living wage above poverty levels.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    39 views1 page

    Reading Passage

    Uploaded by

    Reizel Joyce Garcia
    This document summarizes key issues related to rising unemployment globally. It notes that rapid technological change and increased international competition are damaging job markets in major industrialized countries. While international trade and finance have boomed over the past decade, productivity has decreased and unemployment has increased in places like Europe and the United States. The document discusses several potential explanations for rising unemployment, including the impact of developing countries, new technologies that replace some jobs while creating demand for other skills, and immigration trends. It concludes that nations should pursue economic policies that allow working people to earn a living wage above poverty levels.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 1

    READING PASSAGE

    You are going to read an article about unemployment. Read the text carefully, and then answer
    the questions that follow:
    The growth of the global economy is leaving millions of workers behind. The world is becoming
    a small village. Diseases like inequality, unemployment and poverty are all signs of this. Rapid
    technological change and heightened international competition are damaging the job markets of
    the major industrialized countries.
    This is not how things were supposed to work. Some see technology as backwardness! The
    failure of capitalism to distribute wealth fairly poses a challenge not just to politicians, but to
    economists as well. Despite a continuing boom in international trade and finance over the past
    decade, productivity has decreased, while inequality in the United States and unemployment in
    Europe have increased. Some people made the most of it; others were poverty stricken.
    Another case is Germany, where the rate was below 1 per cent; but with the rat race of
    technology, today it is approaching 10 per cent. In Belgium, the unemployment rate has
    quadrupled over the past 20 years.
    One of these puts the blame on developing countries, or rather our relationship with them. The
    weak is always the scapegoat! Historically, developing countries provided the industrial world
    with raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods. The line has to be drawn somewhere.
    Some economists assert that technology has the upper hand and must be responsible for these
    changes. According to this school of thought, the introduction of new technology such as
    computers creates a surplus of unskilled labor. At the same time, the new technology creates a
    demand for skilled workers who know how to run it, some workers are even likened to wizards
    in their capability of using the new technology.
    A final explanation is immigration, a double- edged sword. The legal immigration of skilled
    workers actually helps the economy as it supplies talents that are needed, creates businesses and
    jobs, and raises output.
    It seems that retaining workers would be the key to solving the problem of unemployment and
    unequal pay, but the trouble is that while more training programmers are needed, there is less and
    less money available to fund them. The remedy for the disease is known but it cannot be
    supplied. Governments are being forced to cut back on their spending in order to compensate for
    reduced production and income, and so parents of the population have to pay the price.
    The starting point for any positive policy would be to make it each nation's goal to improve the
    lives of its citizens. This means that economic policies should be structured so that working
    people can earn a living wage, which makes them above poverty.

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