employment
Eighty percent of Swedes express positive views about robots and artificial intelligence, according to a survey this year by the European Commission. By contrast, a survey by the Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Americans were “worried” about a future in which robots and computers substitute for humans.
l artificial intelligence 人工智能
l By contrast 相对而言
欧盟委员会（European Commission）今年进行的一项调查显示，80%的瑞典人对机器人和人工智能持乐观态度。相比之下，皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)的一项则调查发现，72%的美国人“担心”未来机器人和电脑会取替人类。
In the United States, where most people depend on employers for health insurance, losing a job can trigger a descent to catastrophic depths. It makes workers reluctant to leave jobs to forge potentially more lucrative careers. It makes unions inclined to protect jobs above all else.
l makes workers reluctant to 让员工不愿去做
l forge careers建立事业
l lucrative 赚钱的，有利可图的
在美国，大部分人依赖雇主提供医疗保险，失业可能会导致生活水平出现灾难性的下降。这导致劳动者不愿离开工作岗位，去建立可能更赚钱的事业，也让工会倾向于不顾一切地保护工作岗位。
Yet in Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia, governments provide health care along with free education. They pay generous unemployment benefits, while employers finance extensive job training programs. Unions generally embrace automation as a competitive advantage that makes jobs more secure.
l generous unemployment benefits 高额的
但在瑞典和斯堪的纳维亚半岛的其他地方，政府提供医疗保健服务和免费的教育。它们会发放高额失业救济金，同时雇主也会出资开展广泛的职业培训。工会往往认为自动化是一种竞争优势，会让工作岗位更安全。
Making the United States more like Scandinavia would entail costs that collide with the tax-cutting fervor that has dominated American politics in recent decades.
让美国更像斯堪的纳维亚半岛，会带来与近几十年来在美国政坛占主导地位的减税热情相矛盾的成本。
Sweden, Denmark and Finland all spend more than 27 percent of their annual economic output on government services to help jobless people and other vulnerable groups, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The United States devotes less than 20 percent of its economy to such programs.
l vulnerable groups 弱势群体
来自经济合作与发展组织(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)的数据显示，瑞典、丹麦和芬兰在帮助失业人员和其他弱势群体的政府服务上的支出，均超过年度经济产出的27%。而美国在这类项目上的投入不到经济产出的20%。
For Swedish businesses, these outlays yield a key dividend: Employees have proved receptive to absorbing new technology.
l Dividend 红利
l Receptive 接受的
对瑞典的企业来说，这些支出带来了一个关键的好处：雇员被证明乐于接受新技术。
“If we don’t move forward with the technology and making money, well, then we are out of business,” says Magnus Westerlund, 35, vice chairman of a local union chapter representing laborers at two Boliden mines. “You don’t need a degree in math to do the calculation.”
“如果我们不推进科技进步赚钱，那么，我们就要歇业了，”35岁的马格努斯·韦斯特隆德(Magnus Westerlund)说，他是当地代表着两个博利登矿场劳工工会的副主席。“你不需要数学学位就能算出来。”
閱讀更多 小皇皇的教育故事 的文章
