More importantly a lot of services that were unaffordable 20 years ago are not trivial. This includes smartphones, flat screen TVs, better quality and safer cars etc. In closed economy you would have struggled for all these things. Just like my home country India.
The flood of cheap goods destroyed communities that depended on manufacturing work
There is no evidence to that. Cheap goods helped poor people live a better life and build better communities. American houses today are better than they were 30 years ago. American healthcare is more accessible than it was 30 years ago. More Americans are getting better education than 30 years ago.
They are in such deep doo doo, a charity was started to pay overdue water bills. They have the most $1 properties on auctions sites of any location. They are experiencing horrifying levels of blight.
etc ad nauseum.
There's your evidence.
That is barely any evidence. It is like pointing to a failed Bakery and claiming Bakery industry has sunk. It is a bit like Trump's logic that because Disney replaced some of their staff with H1Bs all programmers are losing their jobs to H1Bs.
Detroit had peak population in 19050s of 1.8M. Today it is half at around 700K. Most of the people have already left Detroit for better future and more will leave.
But guess what? From California to Texas from Washington to Florida not only cities have grown rapidly they have seen unprecedented increase in quality of life of bottom 20% of people. Any protectionist measure aimed at "fixing" Detroit in the Trump's "Make America Great Again" style would have brought a lot of misery to all those people.
People who had well paid manufacturing jobs were not in the bottom 20%. Increases in quality of life of the bottom 20% is irrelevant to the point that manufacturing jobs have seriously declined and this has hurt a large segment of the population.
I don't know nor care what your agenda is, but putting on blinders to obvious and undeniable facts in no way helps your case. People used to be able to get well paid factory jobs in the US without any special education. It isn't the end of the world -- average education needed for entry level work has been trending up for more than a hundred years -- but it absolutely is a hardship for a certain segment of the population.
You are right only if you see things in isolation but society can not be seen that way.
For example my grandpa grew his own organic food and died at the age of 45 by choking on Asthma (no medical care). My father is still alive at 70 despite drinking and eating genetically modified stuff all the time. While in isolation GMO food (might) be horrible, the fact is the lower prices of food have increased human productivity and has ensured my father could afford better health care. I feel things are very interconnected.
Further, you dismissing Detroit as evidence of a large scale trend and comparing it to me saying a single bakery failed while then citing your father and grandfather as evidence for your point of view goes well beyond ironic.
I also see things as interconnected and complicated, yet I am finding you incredibly difficult to engage. Your tactics look an awful lot like bad faith arguments. Maybe you just don't see the conflict inherent in your own maneuvering. Lots of people don't. But you are being incredibly contradictory here.
Best.
I remember clearly during the 80s and 90s that the pro free trade argument from economists was that there would be winners and losers but since we would be richer overall we could use taxes to help out the losers via unemployment, retraining, relocation help, etc.
But what the economists ignored but is so obvious in hindsight is that this country has a strong anti-tax anti-government strain and we refuse to have any social safety net or government assistance. So what we've ended up with are super-winners and millions of permanent losers. And the super-winners are using their wealth to become more politically powerful, increase their propaganda spending and destabilize democracy.