It is no longer cost-effective for the Perks Company to continue offering its employees a generous package of benefits and incentives year after year.

Argument;

It is no longer cost-effective for the Perks Company to continue offering its employees a generous package of benefits and incentives year after year.  In periods when national unemployment rates are low, Perks may need to offer such a package in order to attract and keep good employees, but since national unemployment rates are now high, Perks does not need to offer the same benefits and incentives.  The money thus saved could be better used to replace the existing plant machinery with more technologically sophisticated equipment, or even to build an additional plant. 

Answer; 

The argument that Perks Company should stop generous benefit package for its employees and purchase technologically developed equipment omits some significant factors that must be addressed.  Those critical failures on assumptions crucially make this argument weakened.  There are three main points to be tackled with this problem. 

Primarily, the author's conclusion is based on the idea that a more sophisticated plant machine progresses Perks Company.  However, the argument does not mention about productivity of each plant of existing one and new one.  Whenever a new facility is installed, productivity and cost-effectiveness must be analyzed because it is possible that existing equipment, even if it is old, works enough to cover requirement that Perks Company needs.  New equipment even takes employees in Perks Company some time to get used to its operation; therefore productivity in entire of Perks Company gets decreased.  Why the existing plant needs to be replaced is not specified. 

Another issue ignored by the author is actual national unemployment rates.  Although the argument says that welfare package Perks Company offers to its employees should be adjusted, or even canceled when unemployment rates are low, along with fluctuation of national unemployment rates, at what rates can be benchmarks to determine when to adjust welfare package.  Foe example, if current unemployment rates are at 5.5% while it was just 5% a month ago, what decision does Perks Company make?  Is 0.5% difference big enough to see the situation as a good opportunity to hire highly skilled employees?  The author must explain what percentage of national unemployment rates is recognized high, or low. 

Finally, the assumption that Perks Company can employ employees with high skills at where national unemployment rates are high is not the case.  For example, those graduates from Harvard or Stanford are usually still employed in the recession, or even some of them run their own company instead of being an employee.  Besides, preference of treatment including salary and benefits are different among each employee.  Some workers may want to have incentive upon his sales record while others may ask for stable salary and adequate benefit package.  Since unemployment rates are high, it is not sure that Perks Company can hire highly educated employees who usually go to a bigger or more famous company. 

In conclusion, the argument in current form is not convincing.  More information is needed in order to better evaluate validity of the author's claim.  To begin with, need of replacement of the plant equipment is not specified enough to determine the new one is going to be better.  Also, benchmarks of unemployment rates must be defined to decide when is the good timing to try hiring highly profiled employees.  Finally, the author must takes tendency of highly skilled employees' preference to get hired such as salary or benefits.  Before any conclusion is made, every possible factor must be analyzed.