[cbdfghh]

The issue is that US workers now compete with the whole world.

Until the 70s, the US really had no competition. To compete, you need a stable (legal) system - No one would invest money in a country where it's not far-fetched that someone will overthrow the government, nationalizes your company and throws you in jail.

Oh, and because of geo-politics, one couldn't invest in USSR friendly countries (both from the US side and the other side)

So no one would invest in the USSR, Africa, the Middle East, China or India, Europe and Japan were in shambles. So who built up industry? The US.

After the 60s, different countries started stabilizing. First Japan, then China, now most of the world is actually quite stable, so now the average US worker has to compete against all of India, China, Bangladesh, etc.

You have more supply and the same demand (the world).

And the problem is nothing can really be done about it.

[rm_-rf_slash]

US workers are having to deal with reality itself after an entire history of avoiding it.

"Free land" from genocided native Americans. No equivalently armed and organized opposition from Virginia to California.

"Free labor" from slavery.

Poverty wages during the gilded age; easy-to-access industrial fuels like lumber and coal, and later oil. Again, all available on stolen land.

Early 20th century, Europe was beating itself up so often America became a superpower by pure virtue of being the only power not bombed to shit by 1945.

Through mid 20th century, America artificially suppressed the domestic cost of living at home through economic imperialism by, among other things, overthrowing other regimes - including democracies - that threatened America's economic dominance and control of natural resources, like Guatemala for food and Iran for oil (although the U.K. started it).

So this is the first time the US has ever had to compete on anything close to an even footing.