General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: United States has lost 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000 [View all]lazarus
(27,383 posts)from 1945 to 1980, here's how the economy worked: Labour was used to extract raw materials. Labour was used to process those raw materials. Labour was used to convert the results into finished goods.
Those finished goods were worth substantially more than the raw materials, and labour was, for the most part, well compensated along the way.
This spread wealth throughout the economy, growing a huge middle class with too much power and money for the elites. So they began a campaign to return this country to the gilded age of the late 19th century, moving all the wealth to the top.
They've been very effective, as the middle class is evaporating, real wage growth is in negative territory, and more and more people are living in poverty. Once the 1% have extracted all the wealth, they'll move on to the next region. They're vampire squids, to borrow a term from Matt Taibbi.