Restructuring by Design: Government's Complicity in Corporate Restructuring

The view that corporate restructuring is not only inevitable, but necessary, has become commonplace in US policy and business circles. Corporate restructuring over the past 30 years has not been entirely inevitable. The vast number of mergers, acquisitions, and plant relocations; the generosity of direct subsidies and benefits to business; the paltriness of assistance to the working and non-working poor; and the distribution of the gains from profits and rising stock prices have not been inevitable, but have instead been the result of policy choices. While a cause-and-effect link between a specific government policy and the aftermath of corporate restructuring may be impossible to establish, it seems clear that government has been, at the very least, complicit in bringing about some of the distress caused by the job loss, wage stagnation, and anxiety that has accompanies the era of corporate restructuring.