business environment?

Question

Suggest some ways in which the government might be able to intervene in order to alleviate the effects of a decline in a particular industry.

Answer 1

Haha, throw money at it:
subsidies,
'incentives',
lucrative govt. contracts.

or tax breaks,

Answer 2

The rational approach would be to encourage Companies in declining Industries to 'migrate' into other areas of the Economy that were expanding eg. by providing tax breaks to encourage employee re-training and re-deployment and equipment write-off relief.

However we are not talking about rational individuals here - we are talking about the Government :-)

Decisions will be made on a 'what looks good' basis - viable Companies will be sent to the wall and 'lame ducks' supported until they collapse ... change will be resisted at all costs (well, at all costs to the Taxpayer that is - under no circumstances will the perpetrators of such disasters put up one penny of their own money) the end result (eg. Rover) will be a bigger disaster than if the Companies had been allowed to get on with it and find their own solution.