Piercing the Corporate Veil: A Different Delaware beyond the Boardrooms

It is likely that most people today think only of Delaware as a summer vacation destination, or as corporate America's adopted home, but not as home to poverty that bears all the ugly markings of despair, deprivation and neglect. To look at Delaware beyond its boardrooms today is to witness the contradictions and consequences of an economy fueled by the promise that what would be good for the nation's banks and the wealthy would necessarily be good for all Delawareans-and most notably Delaware's poor. Over the course of the last ten years, Delaware's economic renaissance and its legislative centerpiece, the 1981 Financial Center Development Act has been chronicled and praised by virtually every national publication that reports on the American economy. Its success has been confirmed by balanced budgets, revenue surpluses and a nationally acclaimed low unemployment rate throughout the eighties.

There exists, however, another Delaware which has remained virtually unaffected over the last decade: it is most readily distinguished by its legacy of enduring poverty. That such a legacy continues to exist, after years of heralded economic growth, raises serious questions about the efficacy and equity of the economic policies pursued by Delaware during the eighties.