Quote to Ponder: Making Technology Work For All Americans

"The essence of technological and economic progress is the use of more ideas, skills, and knowledge in the production process and less manual labor and physical resources, thus improving productivity, the ultimate source of real incomes…. Technology can increase productivity, [which is] simultaneously displacing labor and providing the means to improve the incomes of those who remain employed. By improving productivity, technology lowers costs in the affected industry and throughout the economy…. Technology can expand markets and produce a higher rate of growth in output and employment, which could have the net effect of increasing both income and employment…."

"Some analysts believe that prosperity caused by a more knowledge-intensive economy could be even better and more equitably shared than it was between 1945 and 1973, when it was fueled by the civilian applications of technology developed for military purposes, supportive macroeconomic policies, massive improvements in higher education because of the GI Bill, and strong domestic and global demand…. "
[An important factor of technology] is the increased knowledge base of the whole economy brought about by the new technology…. Similarly, the organization of work within and between companies and countries requires new kinds of skills, especially quantitative, abstract learning, interpersonal, communicating, and problem-solving abilities that put a premium on the knowledge and skills needed to most effectively adapt and use advanced technology."

Ray Marshall
Former US Secretary of Labor