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That's really interesting. I don't know very much about the economy at all, but I feel like my instinct is somewhat opposite. The fact that we exported all of the manufacturing to China drastically drove down prices, probably because Chinese people were willing to work for a lot less money. This has enabled an age of technological marvels that non-blue collar workers have been able to take advantage of and bring in tons of money.
I can see where you're coming from, however, that large swaths of the country are in despair. I wonder if there's a better solution, though, instead of trying to turn back time. As noted above, I feel like the exporting of manufacturing was probably a good thing and advanced technology. I would think that a good strategy could involve both of the following:
Major educational reach out to the middle of the country to get them interested at a young age in advancing and profitable scientific fields. This could take the form of either public sector (more public school funding for STEM classes or something) or even private sector funding (big tech companies getting involved in outreach both for publicity and to plant seeds which will become the next generation of great minds that come to work for them)
Greater focus on creating automation and tooling that blue collar workers could use. I'm not fully sure what this would be, but maybe there would be a way to take processes that are not fully automate-able but also can't be easily exported to China, due to language differences, geographic boundaries, location-specific need, or even cultural differences, and create tooling to allow American blue collar workers to do it.
I know the 2nd point is vague, but I feel like as technology progresses, we're not optimally progressing technology and optimally allocating the economy if we just insist that we need to make jobs for people. I feel that jobs should be created based on a need for product, services, and technology advancement, not just a need for someone to have a salary.
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