The Vanishing American Corporation

CHAPTER 1CORPORATIONS IN AMERICA AND AROUND THE WORLD

WE LIVE OUR lives surrounded by corporations and their products. At home, at work, in public places, we see their brands (Coca-Cola), eat their food (McDonalds), use their products (Apple), track their share prices, and use their names as verbs (Google, Xerox). It seems that corporations rule the world.

This book makes a surprising claim: Corporations are in decline, and are reaching the end of their reign in the United States. This is surprising for many reasons. Public corporations (those that sell shares on the stock market) have been the most important institutions in the American economy for more than a century.¹ Corporations are the biggest employers and produce the biggest part of our ...