Lieber, R., & Martinez, B. (2002, November 26). In a weak economy, workers have to pay more for benefits. Wall Street Journal Online. http://online.wsj.com/article/ 0,,SB1038250483830532948-search,00.html?
Section One: Economic Concepts Discussed in Article
This article reports on the actions of companies throughout the United States economy who are making concerted assaults on worker benefits. In many instances, benefits, such as employer contributions to employee retirement savings, plans are being terminated completely. In other cases, such as health insurance, employees are being required to pay ever increasing contributions to the cost of the benefits. Employers content that costs are too high for them to continue to support the benefits are earlier levels. Employees are findings increasingly that they simply must do without the benefit because they cannot afford the increased costs.
The authors of this article present the situation as simply a question of competition and costs. In actuality, however, this situation reported in this article concerns the supply of and the demand for labor. In the case reported in this article, workers in the United States are, for almost the first time, becoming aware of one of the unpleasant realities associated with the concept of globalization that has been sold successfully by a band of contemporary economists who pride themselves for keeping normative considerations excluded from their calculations and deliberations. To these economists, most of whom enjoy job protection at universities, think tanks, or government agencies, it all about cost accounting and finding the lowest price for a factor, regardless of what community or, indeed, economy they destroy in the process.
Section Two: Economic Theory Involved
The economic theory that helps explain the situation reported in the article is the pursuit of globalization in the quest for greater productivity (contemporary econo...