Final Word from Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Remember the first upright robots? They often broke things they picked up and couldn't right themselves when they fell over. There is a fundamental discrepancy in ČSSD's industrial policy, and the party is tiptoeing around the issue with the maladroitness of one of these early robots. On the same day that PM Bohuslav Sobotka praised Siemens for planning to create 1,800 jobs over the next seven years in its Industry 4.0 drive, his chief adviser, Vladimír Špidla, was warning about the decimation of half of all jobs in the future because of robotization. Siemens and others will employ lots of robots and only a few highly trained humans in their factories of the future, bypassing an entire generation of Czech workers who aren't able to make the transition. This might be something for a center-right party to endorse, but a workers' party? ČSSD promises high wages, high employment and high automatization, all at the same time. It simply doesn't compute. [Czech Republic Germany manufacturing first-generation]
Glossary of difficult words
upright - placed in a vertical position;
to right (oneself) - to restore to a normal or upright position;
to tiptoe around - carefully to avoid discussing or dealing with (a difficult or sensitive subject);
maladroitness - clumsiness; inefficiency or ineptness;
decimation - the killing or destruction of a large proportion of a group or species; a drastic reduction in the strength or effectiveness of something;
does not compute - a phrase often used by computers and robots in science fiction TV shows and movies, meaning a failure to understand or that something does not make sense.