Executives and their consultants had legitimate reasons for wanting to reimagine the American corporation. Cheap, high-quality Japanese products were challenging U.S. manufacturers, especially in the auto industry, prompting General Motors once again to seek help from McKinsey. But instead of focusing on quality-control issues, a major reason for Japan’s success, GM and McKinsey embarked on a massive corporate reorganization, notable mostly for how much it cost and how little it accomplished. In the end, the workers paid the stiffest price for this miscalculation through job losses.

The 1980s brought more instability, sparking a breathless string of stories about sudden riches, corporate raids, leveraged buyouts, and the fading appeal of once stable companies. “Billions could be made by buying up American companies and loading them with mountains of debt,” said Les Leopold, director of New York’s Labor Institute and author of Runaway Inequality. As these raiders got rich off what Leopold called “the deindustrialization of America,” their apologists praised them for making corporations more efficient. Some companies had indeed become complacent, but raiders often bought companies to break them up and sell off the pieces, leaving thousands of employees without jobs. “This is not the invisible hand of the market,” Leopold said. “This is the financial extraction process.”