Good deal, heh?
Overseas manufacturing is part of it, but the US still makes tons of money, often in industries other than manufacturing. Some of them do have entry-level jobs in the $75k range, but rarely with just a high school education.
Programming is one of those fields, and realistically, we ought to figure out how to do more with the self-taught developers, sans a $200,000 degree. That won't solve all of the problem -- far from it -- but it's indicative.
The forces that push manufacturing to find ways to lower the cost of production are relentless.
Full automation is very far away. But when it happens I'm afraid it will be Chinese workers building factories designed by Chinese engineers from Chinese steel.
This trend must be reverted.
Who's fault it is? The government has the power to change all that. You cannot pay your rent with a copy of your health insurance bill. I wonder if people still pay way more out of pockets expenses for healthcare now, despite having super-expensive insurance.
And ironically, smokers die so fast that they cost less money than non smokers to support in the healthcare system, so the decline in tobacco usage has probably contributed to rising insurance costs.
I guess my point is that there are tangible changes to our society that contribute to skyrocketing healthcare costs.
(1) https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
(2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the...
Part of that is also because they need to cover costs of the people who don't pay and also pay for all the special billing people and lawyers required to deal with insurance and people who don't pay.
It would also depend on the tax structure to support healthcare as to whether that helps the total comp.
For a lot of lower-middle class people in cities, inflation has been much higher than the reported rate. Healthcare, tuition, rent...