Hijacking

The middle class was built from the manufacturing base. American workers and American consumers and American businesses grew in tandem, shared a symbiotic momentum. Build American, buy American, spend American, save American, invest American, the circuit of supply and demand. Labor costs and profits and prices, all traveling on the deck of the same vessel, none could get too far out of line without capsizing the ship entirely.

And then the equilibrium was destroyed.

American businesses were offered access to overseas workers, and took them.
American businesses were offered access to cheaper imported laborers, and took them.
American consumers were offered access to cheaper imports, and took them.
America's middle class was offered new speculative opportunities based on the tricked-up short-term profits derived from the trends listed just above, and took them.
American workers lost their voice in government, when the Democrats turned into centrist/globalist/finance sector stooges.

Protectionism became a dirty word. We were taught that globalization was 'an inevitability'. What made globalization an inevitability? The inability to find more than ten people in Washington or in the MSM telling the truth about it.

Government, hijacked by traitors, destroyed the middle class.