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It’s globalization in general and the movement of manufacturing plants to cheap labor nations that’s removing the economic and job base of many towns that then begin to lose their populations.

One of the problems that we have in the US is that of overregulation, which only compounds the problem making manufacture in the US even more expensive compared to the cheap labor nations -- now, some regulation might be appropriate, but much of it is illegitimate from a Constitutional perspective. -- Sadly the government has swallowed whole Wickard v. Filburn and this is the result, just as Thomas wrote in his dissent of Gonzales v. Raich: Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything–and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

This is also compounded by corruption, illustrated corporately by things like the Wells Fargo identity theft scandal (where the bank got off with a mere $185 million in fines) or, on the more personal/political side, Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information that would have had any normal/little person doing hard time (turning big rocks into little ones in Leavenworth, if it was a military person).

Jordan Peterson has an interesting video explaining how play and morality interact -- interestingly the fair play of rats in a setting requires the dominant rat to allow the non-dominant one to win some of the time (about 30%) in order for the non-dominant to continue to request play. Now, extrapolating to the government as the big rat we should ask does it allow little rats to win? — The answer is [increasingly] no, nowadays. Even to the point where a judge making up some criminal charge faces no penalty (link).

If small business is the economic engine of America, then these sorts of continual injustices are teaching people that they as persons (and small businesses) simply cannot win… and that means that they are [starting to] refuse to play. [Meaning that continual injustice is literally destroying the engine.]

There are several reasons so much US manufacturing has moved overseas, but cheaper labor is at the top of the list. US firms move so they can compete with cheaper imports coming into the US almost tariff free, and they also seek new markets overseas and particularly in China.

Another less discussed aspect of globalization is the loss of locally owned manufacturing that was not large enough to move to cheap labor, but just lost out to cheaper imports and closed down after decades of successful operation.

And there is another huge aspect of globalization even less discussed. That is that we now have about 20% of US heads of household on one or more of the government’s means tested anti-poverty programs, and in one in five US families, no one has a job. That’s where the “benefits” of globalization are really piling up and the day will come when it can no longer be denied and ignored.

To have a healthy economy and nation in general, the US needs jobs at all skill levels. And the biggest factor affecting job security is not education or skill, but whether the job can be offshored and the work product shipped or transmitted back to the US, and whether the job might be lost to automation.