Can And Should The Endangered Public Company Survive?

Public companies are going to always available in one form or another. The greatest advantage of becoming a publicly traded company is it provides the company with needed cash flow that will increase operations without having to take out loans or sell bonds, essentially meaning they don’t have to pay the money back. It also allows a company to provide stock options to employees, incentivizing them to work hard for the company. Hard working employees equates to a more profitable company, a more profitable company equates to a better stock price. Also, increased prestige and visibility comes with becoming a public traded company.
Public traded companies aren’t only good for the company itself, but also they are good for the general public. The general public can benefit from investing in these public traded companies. And investing with multiple public traded companies allows the general public to diversify their investment portfolios protecting their investments. Just to show how lucrative public trading is, eight of the ten richest people in the United States can attribute their wealth to starting of trading public companies (Forbes, 2014). The only two are not attributed to a public traded company are David and Charles Koch. The Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice President of Koch Industries, America's second largest private company (Forbes, 2014). CargillCargill, Koch Industries, and Bechtel, three of the largest private companies in the world, are not even in the top twenty of the largest companies in the world.
So with public traded companies having the ability to be the money makers that are why is the trend that there are fewer and fewer public traded companies every year?
Edward Kim says, “The number of publicly traded companies in the U. S. continues to fall with a 42% decline from 1997.