VI. Render the text in English:

Все экономические системы имеют две фундаментальные отличительные черты. Первая: как координируется экономическая система – рынком или планированием. Вторая: кто владеет средствами производства – государство или частные лица. Смешение этих двух характеристик приводит к появлению таких понятий, как абсолютный капитализм и абсолютный социализм. Однако абсолютного капитализма не существует. Так, в капиталистическом США частные компании могут контролироваться и регулироваться государством, а в социалистическом Китае каждый, кто может себе это позволить, имеет право владеть личной машиной, банковским счетом и даже заниматься мелким бизнесом. Социализм может сосуществовать с рынком, а капитализм может иметь строгое государственное планирование, как Германия при Гитлере, Италия при Муссолини, и в более мягкой форме Япония и другие «Азиатские тигры» также планируют свою капиталистическую экономику.

VII. Give a summary of the text. Labour

“Labour” is the supply of human resources, both physical and mental, which is available to engage in the production of goods and services. The supply of labour depends on two things:

• the total labour force available, i.e. the population less any sections of the population who do not work

• the number of hours per week the population is prepared to work

The Working population. The groups who do not work consist of:

Young People. The number of young people available for work varies with the education available. If education is largely a matter of parental instruction and the handing down of techniques from father to son, as in many peasant communities, children will participate in production from an early age. If education is a matter of specialist tuition by professional educators the labour supply will be correspondingly reduced as pupils and students are withheld from the labour force during their schooling.

Retired Persons. The age of retirement affects the supply of labour. If, for example, retirement at the age of 65 is normal, so that perfectly healthy and energetic men and women retire compulsory at that age, the supply of labour is reduced. Many people of retirement age today are quite capable of continuing in productive employment.

The Hours Worked per Year. If the working week is reduced the supply of labour falls, unless the resultant improvement in health enables more efficient labour to take place in the shorter working week. Today reducing the 40-hour week to 35 hours almost certainly lowers the supply of labour. Holiday periods reduce the supply of labour. Some workers prefer extra income to shorter working hours, so that “moonlighting” (doing one job by day and another in the evening) is quite common. “Moonlighting” therefore increases the supply of labour available to entrepreneurs.

The Quality of Labour. More important than the actual supply of labour is the quality of labour. It is skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled. Skilled labour is labour which has either mastered a particular craft, like toolmaking or printing, or has been professionally trained, like doctors, dentists, lawyers, and accountants. Semi-skilled labour is in some way a misnomer, since the operatives who are described as semiskilled have in fact reached very high degrees of skill over a very limited range of activities. Such labour can be very quickly trained, in from 4 to 6 weeks at the most. Unskilled labour, as its name implies, requires little specialized training.

Skilled labour tends to be more specific than semi-skilled or unskilled labour. The idea of “specificity” is an important one in economics. If a factor of production is specific it can be used in only one particular task: for instance, a dentist must be employed in dentistry if his true talents are to be used. If we take a dentist and turn him into the fields to cut sugar cane we shall be wasting his talents. Of course it may do the dentist a world of good to find out what a hard life the cane-worker leads, but this is no substitute for the efficient use of his services in caring for his patients’ teeth.

Unfortunately, specialization can have some negative consequences. The most significant drawback is the boredom and dissatisfaction many employees feel when they do the same job over and over. Monotony can be deadening. Bored employees may be absent from work frequently, may not put much effort into their work, and may even sabotage the company. Because of these negative side effects, managers have recently begun to search for alternatives to specialization in the design of jobs. The three most common antidotes to the problems that job specialization can breed are job rotation, job enlargement, and job enrichment.

Job rotation is the systematic shifting of employees from one job to another. For example, a worker may be assigned to a different job every week for a four-week period and then return to the first job in the fifth week. The idea behind job rotation is to provide a variety of jobs so that other workers will be less likely to get bored and dissatisfied. Companies that use job rotation include Ford, Xerox, the Prudential Insurance Co. of America, and the US Nissan subsidiary.

In job enlargement, the worker is given more things to do within the same job. For example, under job specialization, each worker on an assembly line might connect three wires to the product as it moves down the line. After job enlargement, each worker might connect five wires. AT&T, IBM, and the Maytag Co. have all experimented with job enlargement.

Job enrichment is perhaps the most advanced alternative to job specialization. Whereas job rotation and job enlargement do not really change the routine and monotonous nature of jobs, job enrichment does. It is, in essence, providing workers with both more tasks to do and more control over how they do their work. In particular, under job enrichment many controls are removed from jobs and workers are given more authority. Moreover, employees are frequently given new and challenging job assignments. By blending more planning and decision making into jobs, job enrichment builds more depth and complexity into jobs. These changes tend to increase the employee’s sense of responsibility and provide motivating opportunities for growth and advancement.

Factors affecting the efficiency of labour include:

1. The general education and background knowledge of the labour force. If it has been born into the television era of an advanced society it will be knowledgeable, adaptable, and sophisticated. If it has only recently left a peasant community it will be unsophisticated, superstitious, nervous, and slow to adapt itself.

2. The general health of labour force. This may be improved by diet, and adequate welfare services of all sorts. A developing nation’s progress may be slow because a fully effective labour force depends on raising the standard of living. This is a slow process and depends on an efficient labour force. We therefore have a vicious circle, which spirals slowly upwards, but at an increasing pace as the years go by.

3. The incentives offered to labour. Where there are few incentives labour will be less efficient. Where the incentives are great labour will apply itself more assiduously.

4. The availability of other factors of high quality. This is the commonest method of increasing the efficiency of labour. If it is backed by good quality land, labour itself will be more efficient. If it is backed by well chosen tools and adequate power supplies, even a poor labour force will be highly productive.

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