The Death of the Corporate Welfare State

In 1956, a book was published. It was called The Organization Man, and it was hugely influential. It described a world that was something like a “corporate welfare state.” A world in which, if you were able to land a job at a big industrial company like Ford or GE, you essentially had a stable job for life, with a decent salary, benefits, vacation days, and health care. If you’re under 40, this may seem like science-fiction, but it described the economy as the author saw it. So what drove the change? Nicholas Lemman, dean emeritus at Columbia Journalism School and author of the book Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream, says that workers’ lives shifted because of a new approach to economics.