Productive Advances; J.S. Fulda

Their housekeepers, in contrast, have had their jobs simplified and their hourly output in creased by the vacuum cleaner's invention. From little things to big things, the principle holds. Productive advances help everyone, but most of all the less well-to-do. This is hardly limited to inventions and discoveries, but applies to improvements in pro ductive methods as well. Who has been helped the most by specialization, mass production, automation, and robotics? The rich consumer could always afford the work of the skilled craftsman, but the poor shopper depends on the economies of modem technology and produc tive methods for the wide variety of household items from which he chooses. Likewise, ad vances in these productive methods may enrich the factory owner, but it is his workers whose jobs over the decades have become lighter, more meaningful, and better paid. Nor is this observation true only of blue collar workers.

From the pencil to the typewriter to the electric typewriter to the word processor, the jobs of the lowest-paid, white-collar workers have also become lighter, more meaningful, and better paid. Nor have all these advances thrust millions into idleness (although there is some temporary dislocation), as the doomsayers have warned. Rather, mankind's energies have been chan neled more and more into the good things of life and less and less into its bare necessities. Government with its power to tax has not been the cause of the remarkable improvement in our standard of living over the years. Only productive advances make the same physical effort count for more and more and only eco nomic growth so arising can truly increase ev eryone's rewards. And when productivity is enhanced and the economy grows, it is the poor who are most lifted by the rising tide. 0 Joseph S. Fulda is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Hofstra University and resides in Manhattan.