What happened is that all the manufacturing jobs that used to supply middle class lifestyles for the unskilled got shipped to China (or otherwise overseas). Mass immigration has expanded the labor poor diluting earnings for all, and massively increasing competition at the lower ends of the wage scale. "The rich got richer" because there is less competition than ever. Housing will only ever get MORE expensive as more and more people take up more and more space making single family homes pricing more resemble the luxury that they actually are. You could reverse all these trends and fix inequality but I can all but guarantee that you wouldn't employ any of the policy tools necessary to make it happen. Such as restricting immigration for the unskilled and enforcing border controls, thus reducing competition at the lower end of the wage scale and directly improving the lot of poor people in the US. The reduced competition might even incentivize employers to raise wages.

At the end of the day this devolves into tariffs, because the worlds workforce truly is competitive. If you want fat, state protected corporations then fine, but I'd rather have specialization. Though I do think we need to be harsher on some actors that steal IP, like some Chinese corporations.

"At the end of the day this devolves into tariffs"

No not really, you boil it down to that, but that's simply your framing nothing more. There's also the regulatory environment, so no it's not all about tariffs. There are almost no environmental controls or labor laws in China. So that is a huge factor. There is equal or more possibility that companies wish to avoid the responsibility of ensuring compliance as they do with merely avoiding taxes.

"If you want fat, state protected corporations then fine"

How does restricting the supply of unskilled labor from illegal immigrants and border crossers, visa holders of various stripes have anything to do wit fat protected corporations?

I agree that we need to harmonize regulations for trade, but guess what? We're already doing that and the Chinese are responding by getting cleaner so they can compete in more areas. In fact the US is one of the most pollution-heavy developed countries, so if anything the US is exploiting our shared global environment.

The reality is that, globally, there is a low skill labour glut because most countries are only now developing advanced education systems. If you want to stop competition from low skill labour you ultimately need high tariffs or extreme mechanization / automation, neither of which are good in the long run for poor people here.

If your argument were true, we'd see increased unemployment. But employment is near effective maximum, and has been for most of the post-1980 period where wages have stagnated relative to productivity.

Try again, this time taking observed facts into account.

Employment is a rather weak term. The fact that you are working 10 hours a week makes you employed but doesn't say a word about the quality of the job (uber driver?) or if you can support / nourish a family

I'm not talking about the quality of the job. I'm talking about the idea that sending jobs overseas + illegal immigration explains the current situation. It does not.

No, not necessarily. We would see wage depression as supply of applicants depresses wages because the demand remains relatively constant. Which might explain why wages stagnated but productivity simultaneously went up.

Right now, millions and millions of the poorest people around the globe are being lifted out of poverty by expanding industrialization and capitalism. If you look at the "elephant curve" (ref. below), the only people that did not have rapid increases of income from 1998 to 2008 are about the 70% to 90% range, coinciding with the middle class of wealthy countries.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2016/09/17/s...

A common interpretation of this is that globalization has resulted in the middle class of wealthy countries now competing with the hungrier, more desperate residents of poor countries. This suppresses the former's wages and raises the latter's.

Capitalism will always have a "race to the bottom" to find the cheapest way to complete a product or service at the lowest possible cost. It can be exploitative, but it is not a zero sum game. With every passing year human society bootstraps itself into more wealth that is used to solve our daily problems.

To me, this is net positive to the world. The global poorest are in the most need of more income, and stand the most to benefit. Efforts at redistribution and charity, while well-meaning, pale in comparison to individuals working hard to better their lot in life. The middle classes are not suffering too greatly on net from globalization (their income did not shrink, it merely stagnated or rose less quickly).

It is easy to weave and popularize a story of middle class deprivation and suffering, because this story provides an interesting tale of the demise of bourgeois values- and who doesn't like that story? But in reality the economy is more nuanced than that. Maybe in some number of decades, the elephant curve will begin to flatten out as enough people rise to relative wealth, or cheap energy will boost the economy with gusto. Until then the middle class can wait.

It is actually great that many people will be lifted out of poverty. What is unfortunate is that this can be funded a number of ways: Reduction in corporate profit, reduction in personal profit, a reduction in work hours, etc. So many ways that the benefit of moving this work offshore could benefit the broad economy.

The way that has been selected, at least in the United States, is that we detached wages from productivity. This means that the benefits from offshoring production (which is good, get more people involved in the economy) is enjoyed by those that receive those jobs, and by those who own capital, while the costs are carried by the middle class of the US.

You say it isn't a zero sum game, but then why in the hell is the middle class in the US getting wiped out, while we produce more and more billionaires?