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Wealthy nation of educated men and women who seem to have lost sight of the fact that everythingfrom the simplest necessities to the finest luxuriesmust be produced through our own collective hard work. We have come to expect automatic increases in our collective standard of living, but we seem to have forgotten that these increases are possible only when our productivity continues to grow. One thing that must change is the rate at which we substitute capital equipment for human labor. Simply put, our labor force has increased at a far greater rate than has our stock of capital investment. We seem to have forgotten that our past productivity gains, to a large extent, were realized from substitutions of capital for human labor. Today, 3 times as many robots are listed as capital assets by Japanese firms as by United States firms. There is no doubt that robots will become a common sight in American factories. Representing a new generation of technology, robots will replace factory labor much as the farm tractor replaced the horse. Robot technology has much to offer. It offers higher levels of productivity and quality at lower costs; in promises to free men and women from the dull, repetitious toil of the factory, it is likely to have an impact on society comparable to that made by the growth of computer technology. 21. The word obsolete most probably means_______. A. weak B. old | 
