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Last month, the White House and labor unions announced an agreement to tax high-cost, employer-sponsored health insurance plans. Labor leaders say the proposal is too high a price to pay for the limited health care package they expect to emerge from Congress, therefore, there is really no support for this agreement.

This article talks about the scarcity of jobs for citizens living in Greece. Greek citizens are not having much luck finding any occupations, even simple ones such as working as a waiter in a restaurant or working in a supermarket. This is mostly a dilemma for the Greek youth, furthermore, data shows that more than half of the citizens under the age of 25 are out of work. The greatest challenge for employers is not a lack of cheap labor but a shortage of demand for their products, therefore, due to the fact that their products aren't selling they can't hire people because their company will be going into debt.

This is an example of scarcity in the Mexican government. It is scarcity of capital and of labor. The scarcity of capital is the limited quality security resources. The scarcity of labor is not just of people, but as well a scarcity of good people. Many prison guards are corrupt, and there aren't a lot of them. This is also a good example of what I'll call a gambling opportunity cost. The government decided to not invest enough in security with the gamble that there could be a prison break. It would have been a good gamble if there were no prison break, however, it turned for the worse. Not only, of course, did the prisoners escape, but now the government needs to pay the wages of all of the sudden security requirements. They most likely are having to pay as much for the mistake as they would have had to pay to do it right the first time.

Ok, this one may be a bit of stretch this week but it flows more into "margin" than "negative externality", but stick with me. What I really like about this article was that it could have focused on the Chinese sweat shops or the lack of parking lot security, which, admittedly, are negative externalities, but it went in depth on the differences between the externalities of Costo's labor force as opposed to Wal-Mart's. You see, people really like Costco because it pays it's workers between $11-19 an hour while Wal-Mart only pays $11-12. Many would like to say this is because Wal-Mart is the child of Satan brought to Earth to annihilate humanity and do battle with the son of God... who is also God... And to that I say, "corporations aren't people", but that's besides the point. Wal-Mart doesn't just do this because they want more money and because Costco is socially conscious, it's because the margins are much different between both companies. You may not think about it, but all that organizing and "everything you need is here" costs a lot more than what twice as customers can suffice. A lot of that low paid wage goes towards menial tasks like waiting at a cash register for a half hour before the rush of customers arrive or going from aisle to aisle putting the cereal back on the correct shelf because you're just too lazy to do it yourself. What we don't realize is that, sometimes, the negative externalities that we see are a product of our own self-entitled sentiment.

France was one of the last European countries to really feel the effects of the global recession, but now unemployment is increasing. The labor rules in France apparently make it difficult to fire workers, but the French president and worker's unions are working together to draft new legislation that can assist the firms in France by giving them more flexibility.

We started macroeconomics and I thought finding an article about unemployment would hit the target! So this article discusses how the government keeps track of how many unemployed citizens there are. It's called the Current Population Survey which is conducted monthly by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you've ever heard of the Census, it's kind of like that. The article also looks at how the unemployment rates have increased or decreased throughout the years and how there are some citizens that do not fit either category "These people are not employed, but they also don't fit the government's definition of the unemployed." The government is searching for ways to improve unemployment.

A lot of people have preached in the past about how we should destroy the social class system, about how the difference between wealthy and impoverished is an abomination and that the workers should rise up against their oppressive bosses and show them that the employers need their employees and not the other way around. However, most people probably haven't considered the economic angle to it. I hadn't, till I read this article, and I didn't more than the first few sentences to get me thinking. In a country where 10% can buy whatever they want and the other 90% can barely afford to feed their families, how do you get anything done. Those 90% probably do menial labor all day, creating goods and providing services for the 10% that act as their directors, and while this system works out fine for those 10%, your entire aggregate demand is still comprised of only the wants and needs of a tenth of your population. The fewer people you have with the ability to buy things, the smaller your macro-economic activity will be and, thus, your GDP. Now, while this kind of inequality is not fatal to a countries economic stability, per the previous reasons, it definitely puts it at a disadvantage to countries of equal wealth, resources, and population where demand is spread more evenly per capita.

This article talks about the protests of China against the Japanese goods. It states that both countries are economically independet, however China adores Japanese brands. It all started out with Japan having their factories in China, since theres a lower production cost. Now that China protests it will move the firms into other countries, such as Thailand.

The situation occurring in India right now exemplifies the conflicts behind allowing MNCs to embed themselves in a developing economy. FDI is a great source of income for developing economy, being an instantaneous source of employment for in that economy and being a mutually beneficial setup for MNCs in need of additional labor. The problem is that FDI tends to just be a band-aid approach, helping to sustain the economy and cover its financial issues but not really allowing said economy to progress any further. What certain government parties are saying to the Indian government is that they want MNCs to be forced into some sort of investment in India's future growth if those companies are going to embed themselves in the country.