The ultimate issue is lack of upward mobility for someone willing to start at the bottom in an unskilled job, work hard, and produce their way up the ladder.
Look at American history. We began as an agrarian society. A motivated, industrious individual could go into the wilderness, acquire farmland at little or no cost and own a farm. If he was industrious and highly productive he could acquire wealth by adding to his land holdings and increasing his productivity by investing in equipment (plows, horses, and later machinery) and hiring laborers. The most industrious would eventually own mills, feed stores, and other infrastructure business.
As the nation began to industrialize an unskilled worker could get a job in a factory sweeping floors, moving around boxes and equipment, and doing other menial directed tasks. Those workers who displayed good attitudes, were highly productive, and showed up for work every day on time would eventually be taught a skill. If they continued to produce they had opportunities to move up to higher skilled jobs or even into management. It is noteworthy that many unskilled poor southern rural blacks with no hope of upward movement due to Jim Crow laws moved north in the early to middle 20th century in order to obtain factory jobs and have the chance to improve their economic prospects. They were pursuing the American dream.
The deindustrialization of America, in the pursuit of “free trade”, destroyed many avenues for industrious unskilled and undereducated Americans to move up the economic ladder through hard work and determination. The small factories that once filled urban areas, and were scattered across fly over country are now gone. Also gone are the small businesses that provided raw materials, parts, and services to those factories. In the 20th century small businesses employed most American workers. As small companies grew, their reliable and productive workers had opportunities to grow economically with the business. Today small businesses are failing at a greater rate than they are created for the first time in our history. This closes another door for economic advancement for the unskilled and semi skilled.
The Uber driver and Amazon contract delivery carrier do not have the same opportunity to sacrifice and grow as the floor sweeper in a factory 50 years ago. No matter how hard they work, or how much they produce, as contract workers their earnings are capped and there is no opportunity to develop more valuable skills. The 21st century outsourcing economy is not creating pathways for upward economic mobility for the millions of people with limited skills and education. The replacement of unskilled citizen workers with robots and unskilled immigrants will only exacerbate the situation.
Globalization is killing the American dream by eliminating opportunities for economic advancement. Today there are nearly 100 million Americans of working age who are not employed. Those Americans can vote and if the slow growth 21st century economy continues to provide fewer opportunities for employment and economic progression, the increasing number of unemployed will vote for socialism and redistribution of wealth.
That's exactly how I did it. Without a college education, I now hold an executive position. The secret is this: Show up on time every day with a positive attitude and volunteer for any extra duties or overtime. Never bang in sick. Never cop an attitude. Give 100%. Eventually you will get noticed and developed for promotion. Companies are STARVED for employees like this and will be eager to move them up the ladder. If not, you are working for the wrong company.
30 years since I washed dishes and bagged groceries, I now oversee an entire region of 11 branches and over 600 employees and many of the branch managers who now work for me were also go-getters that I recognized from the ranks and moved up. They are now the ones who make me successful in my current position.
What you're saying here is that an independent contractor today doesn't have the same opportunity for success as a wage-earning employee. I don't know if that's correct, but that mentality explains a lot about what is wrong with the U.S. today.
Go back over your description of American history, and you can see clearly where things went off track. Your "model for success" suddenly transformed from a free, independent farmer to a wage-earning employee who was willing to spend the rest of his life working for someone else.
Maybe that's an inevitable result of industrialization, but I would suggest that this shift from free, independent people to a nation with a massive middle class that relies entirely on someone else for their employment is a big, big part of our problem today.