[DoodleDawg]

Funny. The middle class was mostly built by tradesmen and makers who didn’t have much schooling beyond high school.

And those opportunities have been pretty much gutted by offshoring much of our manufacturing.

[Beagle8U]

“And those opportunities have been pretty much gutted by offshoring much of our manufacturing.”

You forgot the end of that sentence...’due to outrageous demands and work rules imposed by unions.’

[LS]

No. Outsourcing has nothing to do with it. Those jobs do not pay what an American middle class lifestyle needs to survive. They would be gone, "offshoring" or not. This can be seen in the fact that the nations they were once out-sourced to are now themselves out-sourcing to still lower-tier economies as they get wealthier.

The fact is, the key is now and has always been "value-added," and menial jobs relatively speaking add very, very little value. So it's either retool as a tech economy or whine and be poor. There is no going back to assembly lines.

[central_va]

And those opportunities have been pretty much gutted by offshoring much of our manufacturing.

A big fat tariff would fix that.