I grew up in rural, small-town America -- I can tell you the real reason why people love Donald Trump

[Blue_true]

66. Their grandparents or parents did have it better in the 50s.

Studies have shown that since 1972 the American standard of living has continuously declined, much faster in rural areas, Reagan put that decline on steroids and no democratic President since has totally been able to reverse that decline, mostly because the rest of the world caught up to us.

What Trump loving people don't understand is WHY their parents and grandparents had it better in the 50s. Most of Europe and a large part of Asia had been decimated by WWII. Our economy was the only advanced economy that was functioning. The rest of the world needed and took in anything that we could build. Europe and Japan recovered from the devastation of war and began developing advanced economies, the slowly needed less from us and that started to show up in the late 60s. Nixon's policies made things worse, then came the first oil shock, Japan and Europe had learned how to build reliable small cars, we had not,they started to take away our auto market and then the metals markets. Then Reagan came along and allowed companies to offshore jobs simply to increase profits beyond already adequate levels. As jobs vanished, companies saw that they could squeeze workers and Unions, pay stayed stagnant or dropped while cost went up. Industries that needed rural American labor to meet 50s and early 60s European and Asian demand didn't need rural plants anymore, they were too out of the most efficient operating model, which was done best where there was abundant labor to pick from, so rural facilities closed and rural towns and cities shrunk, disappeared or eventually got absorbed into growing nearby cities and city surburbs. So rural America is caught in a rapidly changing world, as the few minerals extraction industries located there shrunk or they automated and farming became a mega-corporate or wealthy family affair.