People feel that they have to work, the ethics is deeply fixed. They identify with their j

obs and if they lose them, both the identities and feelings of usefulness go. This is in addition to the financial penalty of being jobless. The market may theoretically distribute resources in a favorable manner, though in reality this is not true. What is true, however, is that it is a hard and at times cruel taskmaster.

If, by and large, we are to make the best use of microelectronics, planning at all levels is necessary so as to prevent the worst signs. Employers and unions must talk over Technology Agreement which will cover the speed, method operation, training and retraining needs associated with new processes and in which the maximum of advanced in formation is vital. Government as an employer is not freed from this procedure. Risk capital needs to be made available for new enterprises—the structure of capital markets in the United Kingdom provides (and can provide) very little. We have far too few qualified analysts or micro-electronic experts and are still training far too few.

The most important point, however, concerns works or the lack of it. As unemployment rises and as the chance of getting another job correspondingly diminishes, in present circumstances, the resistance to redundancy will rise, and quite understandably so. If people made redundant today represent an investment for an uncertain future then they must not be penalized—we encourage normal investment through grants and tax allowances, why not for people too？ Unions will almost certainly bargain for productivity payments to be applied to those who have been sacrificed so as to get the increased productivity and to minimize those sacrifices.

In longer terms, however, it is clear that the old attitudes to work will have to change. Leisure must be viewed as being important to human development as work itself. This involves changes in our primary and secondary school systems and provision of life-long education schemes. It is also the ideal opportunity to improve the services which have a person-to-person contact like health, social services, for example, to the disabled. In short, the next decade could see a take-off into a more caring society in which opportunities exist but the penalties for failure are lessened. This involves a reevaluation of public expenditure and what it is for; a reevaluation of work itself and a reevaluation of our political decision-making processes. While all this possible, it is also possible to drift in the opposite direction, towards an inhuman totalitarian regime where profit is the only belief. The choice is ours. We must not fail our children.

According to the author, to take full advantage of microelectronics, we must try to______.

A．reduce unemployment

B．preclude the most serious negative potentialities

C．increase our energy production

D．control both the unions and employers