单选题
Opinion polls are now beginning to show an unwilling
general agreement that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on.
high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find
ways of sharing the available employment more widely. But we
need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of
work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should we riot rather
encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not
create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an
employer? Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as
well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work?
The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which
most people's work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be
coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may
have to be reversed. This seems a discouraging thought. But, in fact, it could
offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its
history shows, has not meant economic freedom. Employment
became widespread when the enclosures (圈地运动) of the 17th and
18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving
them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for
themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed
work from people's homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then
by road, people traveled longer distances to their places employment until
eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and
places in which they lived. Meanwhile, employment put women at
a disadvantage. It became customary for the husband to go out to paid
employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his
wife. All this may now have to change. The time has certainly
come to switch some effort and resources away from the impractical goal of
creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to
manage without full-time jobs.
单选题
What idea did the author derive from the recent opinion polls?
A. Available employment should be restricted to a small percentage of the
population.
B. New jobs must be created in order to rectify high unemployment
figures.
C. Jobs available must be distributed among more people.
D. The present high unemployment figures are a fact of life.