Middle Class Blues

It seems everybody is either worrying about middle class job mobility, prospects, decline, etc.  They also have prescriptions; bring back manufacturing jobs, raise the minimum wage, encourage unionization, more entrepreneurship.  Meanwhile, the rage of out of work whites builds and encourages demagogues to pander to the urge these people have to lash out at anyone who doesn't look like them.  What even the most blunt pundits don't tell us is unless we have another national mobilization comparable to WW 2, full employment based on manufacturing jobs won't be coming to a town near you or me anytime soon.  The halcyon days of the 1950s and 60s were based on the fact the US was the only major economy in the world not devastated in the war.  Everyone wanted and needed American goods and we built the factories and infrastructure to provide them to the world.  In effect we had a monopoly on world manufacturing.  First the Japanese and Germans recovered their previous status, then the rest of the world, seeing our example built factories and began to compete.  To think we could have kept our manufacturing jobs by forcing companies to keep the jobs in the USA would only have caused a faster decline than what actually happened.  Better policy could have cushioned the impact on workers, but education can only go so far if there is no payoff at the completion of school.  Rebuilding America is a worthy goal, but with the present gridlock in congress, it is unlikely that will happen.  The polarization of the polity and citizen anxiety encourages the worst instincts in the political class.  What to do...