But what units of account?
Accountability is the proper term to use here, without any question. Yet it is necessary also to define the most sensible (effective, achievable) combination of the ends sought to be achieved, and the state of affairs after the action steps have been taken fully or as fully as it turns out actually is attainable.
A benefit of some time spent in unionized steelmaking work is that when pressed for big answers to big problems in the productive realm of the U.S. economy, I don't hesitate, I reach for remembrance of my union card. No claim that I subscribe to the main run of current union sector political views, at all. But for a plan to shake things up and get sensible results, and I posted along these lines in a related thread about a year ago (as the Boeing board was going through changes and Dennis was headed out), make it happen that Son of Wimpy Rides Again. I mean, never having met the man I recognize some up-on-a-pedestal effect might be involved. But he was one son-of-a-gun effective, wasn't he?
So rather than measure change by the ordinary unit of account in an economy (one of the three functions of money, in standard Economics teaching) go instead for qualitative change. Convene whatever federal agency and authority proceedings are needed but get the manufacturing of the 787 back to the Pac Northwest. Undo the bust of the union. Yeah, it'll be criticized as the dread "industrial policy"....but technology has spread, and become more diffuse reaching into countries and sectors of countries' economies so rapidly and bringing so much erosion to U.S. as well as European manufacturing prowess. Having that label slapped onto this action step would not deter advocacy for its pursuit and fulfillment. It's a choice to shake things up in a big way, or become passive in the onslaught of global effects like...let me think for a moment, ... how about a strange new virus which emanates from the major economic competitor to the U.S. and spreads and devastates major segments of national and regional economies all around the world? Might even hurt the civil aviation sector internationally, you never know until it happens.
The other major change I think is needed is to de-glorify boards of directors - the progressive platform for what is called stakeholder capitalism is, well, I see it as little better than vapid. We don't have capitalism, we have a free enterprise system. Big and important differences. And the least well-moneyed relatively young person with a strong sense of holding a good idea and the gumption to bring it into the marketplace and stay with it, that young person just plain *ought* to be able to get a good "fam flight" observing and interacting with the actual directors of any major company. I don't mean to embarrass him but a certain relatively young person broke away from the Wall Street Journal and founded The Air Current and ... the example illustrates the point.
A board can be as stuffy as a hot humid summer day when the air isn't moving at all but open it up to qualified and interested people who want to participate in the line of business somehow, and you'll get improvement. If this is too Up With People-ish, okay, fair point. But a few years ago, I attended a client's board meeting to present a brief item on legal work I was doing on an academic accreditation issue. A person entered the boardroom a little bit after the meeting had started, sat down next to me. A director. On the next break, in ice-breaker conversation, turns out we both had lived in a certain midwestern city close to Chicago. Turns out also her husband was an attorney at a firm in Chicago I knew well. Turned out also he had been CEO of a major defense and aerospace contractor. If you have to think any further about whether this little bit of plain old business world conversation was a kind of kick-start to pursue a re-engineering of my legal career so that it could include aviation and space....well, WR sends.