I agree with everything except the part where you suggest that trade has nothing to do with this mess. Exportation of jobs and importation of foreign labor has contributed greatly to the mess we find ourselves in. True, some have benefitted greatly by this scenario but the majority of us have been steamrolled by free trade policies. It’s the same old story, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. This mess is all about trade policies.
I'm with you on that, brother.
Illegal immigration is purely the provision of mass quantities of low skill labor (supply) which reduces prices (wages)of that labor among existing (Legal American) workers. That's not Free Trade. That's Invasion.
The biggest violation of American Sovereignty, the American Worker, Crime Victims, Fiscal Policy and respect for the rule of law has been the bi-partisan sell-out to Illegal Immigration. Democrats do it for votes. Republicans do it for industry and vanity. Both are traitors.
Most reviews of wages show the rich got rich, and the poor stayed the same. I'll stipulate two major exeptions to that:
1) Illegal immigration has been the biggest lever keeping wages of the poor low. See my rabid anti-illegal post above.
2) Adjusted for health care benefits received, my understanding is that the poor got richer too. The only problem is that all their earnings increases were eaten up by company run (non-competitive, non-economic, high cost) health care plans. If we had had a Free Market in Health Care, actual income gains probably would have occurred.