The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Work-Force And the Dawn of the Post-Market Era (Penguin Business Library) - Tapa blanda

Unemployment is at its highest level since the Great Depression. Technologies, which have brought vast improvements in productivity, have slashed the numbers employed in manufacturing and agriculture, while the service sector is unable to take up the slack. A tiny elite of 'knowledge workers' - scientists, entrepreneurs and consultants - will still be in demand but most jobs are disappearing fast, resulting in the creation of an 'underclass' caught between apathy and criminal violence. Such, argues Rifkin in this powerful polemic, is our true situation today. We can either bury our heads in the sand or urgently rewrite the social contract by expanding the non-profit sector, cutting the working week and sharing the fruits of progress.

An internationally renowned social critic, Jeremy Rifkin is the best-selling author of The Biotech Century and The Age of Access (new in hardback). Rifkin is a fellow of the Wharton School Executive Education Program, where he lectures on new trends in science and technology, and their impacts on the global economy to CEOs. He is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington D.C.