Massive tax cuts for the wealthy, particularly for capital gains and dividends, have reduced the resistance for money escaping corporations into the hands of investors, rather than the value add of paying employees more or improving working conditions and benefits. These changes started to occur in the 1980's, rather than the Dodge vs. Ford decision from 1919.

While it is certainly true that nothing legally changed (edit: this isn't true: there is a full on attack on collective bargaining ongoing) in the more recent 30-40 years to allow for the massive accumulation of wealth and corporate practices that make the 'FULL STOP' in the original comment more accurate than before, the modification of tax law certainly has had a major impact.

Actually, shareholder value has only become an important emphasis in the past few decades.

> On August 12, 1981, Jack Welch made a speech at The Pierre in New York City called ‘Growing fast in a slow-growth economy’. This is often acknowledged as the "dawn" of the obsession with shareholder value. [0]

Milton Friedman's 1970 op ed in the NYT [1] arguing that profit is the primary social responsibility of a corporation has also been influential on executive thinking in this regard.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctr...

However, the manufacturing capability in Asia has caught up in the last couple of decades. This means companies can provide more shareholder value by moving manufacturing overseas where costs are lower.

It doesn't have to be new, but we have new and more ways to increase shareholder value. Like vastly improved methods of automation that have appeared in the past few decades.