美国前总统富兰克林·罗斯福在1933年曾向国家宣布：“我们唯一值得恐惧的是恐惧本身。”他是在美国大萧条期间失业潮肆虐时发表的这番讲话。然而，人们如今又陷入了同样的失业恐惧当中。

美国商务部前任部长佩妮·普利茨克称，超过75%的美国家庭对自动化、人工智能和全球化引发的工作岗位消失感到担忧。普利茨克上周一在科罗拉多州阿斯彭市举办的《财富》科技头脑风暴大会上讲话时指出，这种恐惧是不健康的，而且美国应开展更多的工作，帮助美国人应对工作环境的变化。

普利茨克说：“在美国，教育和职业培训之间存在摩擦。我们应提供更多的便利，帮助人们获取相关技能。”外交关系委员会的一个工作组最近围绕该议题发布了一篇重要报道，该工作组的负责人便是普利茨克。

她还指出，美国应效仿德国和瑞士的做法，为美国民众提供更多实用的实习机会。普利茨克还强调，美国家庭应看到，孩子们从十年级开始便有一条直通职场的道路，而且在未来职场中，机器人和机器学习将发挥越来越大的作用。

美国不应耗费过多的时间去恐惧自动化，而是应该投入更多的精力为现状做准备，这一观点也得到了布拉德利·塔斯克的首肯。布拉德利运营着风投资本公司Tusk Ventures。他列举了自动化卡车运输这个案例，虽然它导致了一些工作的消亡，但也催生出了一些新工作。

普利茨克和塔斯克还发现，移民是美国劳动力的另一个痛点。

塔斯克表示：“如果看看民调，并剔除其中的政治因素，我们就会知道，美国民众希望这些合法移民能够很好地工作。”他还指出，移民是众多颇具争议的话题之一，这一点大多数国家都有同感。他表示，问题的源头在于当前的政治体系，其中，激进的初选民众处于统治地位，而反对者则不断妥协并与其达成共识。

塔斯克上周一在科技头脑风暴大会的演讲中指出，美国应简化其投票系统，从而让其民众可以通过其智能手机投票。他表示，此举将提升选民的参与度，同时选出更多能够围绕移民和其他问题，推出中间方案的政客。

解决移民僵局可能对于美国未来劳动力的健康度至关重要。普利茨克称，移民正在推动多伦多这类城市的增长，而美国奉行的政策，包括配偶签证限制，加大了美国吸引人才的难度。

她说：“你拿到了H1-b签证，但你的配偶却不能工作，这一点听起来真的是不可思议。”

普利茨克和塔斯克都曾表示，如今，美国政府可能无法揽获足够的政治意愿，来解决职业培训和移民这类难题。然而，他们说，最有可能出现的改革可能会源于州或当地的政客。（财富中文网）

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” President Franklin Roosevelt told the country in 1933. His message came amid the epic unemployment of the Great Depression, but the same fear over jobs is very much alive today.

More than 75% of U.S. households are anxious about job loss related to automation, artificial intelligence, and globalization, according to former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker. Speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo., on last Monday, Pritzker said this fear is unhealthy and that the country has to do more to prepare Americans for a changing workplace.

“In the U.S., there’s a friction between education and being ready for work. We need to make it easier for people to get skills,” said Pritzker, who led a task force by the Council on Foreign Relations that recently issued a major report on the issue.

She added that the U.S. should emulate the likes of Germany and Switzerland, and boost the amount of practical apprenticeships available to Americans. Pritzker also stressed that American families need to see a career path from the tenth grade into a workplace in which robots and machine learning will have a bigger and bigger place.

This notion that the country must spend less time fearing automation, and more time preparing for it is shared by Bradley Tusk, who runs the venture capital firm Tusk Ventures. He cited the example of automated trucking, which will eliminate jobs but also give rise to new ones.

Pritzker and Tusk also identified immigration as another pain point in the U.S. workforce.

“If you look at the polling, and get the politics out of it, you see Americans want legal immigration to work well,” said Tusk, who says immigration is among many controversial topics on which most of the country agrees. The trouble, he added, is the current political system, in which activist primary voters hold sway, thwarts compromise and consensus.

Tusk said on stage at Brainstorm Tech on last Monday that the country needs a simpler voting system, in which citizens could cast ballots with their smartphones. He claimed this would increase voter participation and elect more politicians who would enact middle-of-the-road solutions on immigration and other issues.

Solving the immigration impasse may also be critical to the future health of the American workforce. According to Pritzker, immigration is driving growth in foreign cities like Toronto, while the U.S. is pursuing policies, including restrictions on spousal visas, that make it harder to attract talent.

“It’s crazy to say you get an H1-b visa but your spouse can’t work,” she said.

Both Pritzker and Tusk said, for now, the U.S. government may not be able to muster the political will to solve the hard questions over training and immigration. Instead, they said the best chance for reform may come from state and local politicians.