Why are high-level programming languages preferred over lower-level languages?

"One reason we prefer to write programs in high-level programming languages is that we can use syntax that is closer to plain English. Though programming language syntax is a far cry from “natural” language, it is far closer than lower level languages such as assembly or binary machine code. However, from what we’ve seen so far, when writing programs we are still forced to utilize the primitive variable types built-in to the language we’re using, which is still quite limiting."