What has happened over the last 30 to 50 years has been the fire sale of America. I have been around since Harry Truman was in the White House. I witnessed the fire sale.
Years ago, America was a series of local communities populated with small locally owned and operated businesses. Most were family businesses that were passed down from father to son. Need a loaf of bread...choose among a variety of bakeries...Want to cook a nice roast for Sunday dinner...the local butcher knew exactly what cut to sell you. Need new clothes, choose among a variety of clothing stores from custom tailors to casual wear. Have a leaky faucet...the local hardware store owner would not only sell you the parts, he'd walk you through installation.
And often, the local grocer knew you by name, where you lived and even what day you got paid. Why? Because he would have a kid that delivered groceries to your home and there was a relationship created with enough trust where you could run a tab at the store. Oh, hi Mary, need a gallon of milk. I'll put it on your tab, see you on Friday.
These businesses not only employed many in the community, they served as a source of talent where we found our civic leaders. Mayors, councilmen, councilwomen, and other public servants.
All that began to change when the big box stores started to move in. It began with large grocery chains. Some little deli, corner stores, butchers, and bakers were able to survive doing late evening and Sunday business (the large stores closed early and were closed on Sundays). And by offering real quality products and service.
Then the local five and dime stores were invaded by the K-Marts of the world, and eventually the death sentence to local businesses, the Walmart stores.
We live in a country with cheap products, but the price was MUCH higher than we ever knew. The price was America itself.
Huh! There are some good thinkers on this forum. You are adding another whammy to America's loss of really all manufacturing jobs to poor countries: all the small stores went to large corporations, and they are getting nothing but huger and huger: I buy essentially everything but groceries from Amazon now, and just have it sent to the house.
This is actually close to the future envisioned by Edward Bellamy in 1885, his futuristic novel "Looking Backward," about the utopian year 2000, when people didn't have to waste time going to stores. They would just look up what they wanted and send for it.
However, you are right, of course, that it's a double whammy: all the manufacturing jobs are gone and all the small stores are gone, with so many of the clerk jobs gone with the much greater efficiency of an Amazon, or a Daedalus, or any Internet shop.
I am beginning to see that high unemployment really is systemic now because where ARE the jobs, you know? Could get to be a problem.
Creative destruction. Change, it's always with us. I'm not sure it does a lot of good to protest change.
We used to know that the essence of America was the middle class. Workers. Creators of wealth. The majority of us who worked and raised their families and attended baseball games and church.
Then supply side economics got preached telling us that we were wrong about that and we really owe it all to the rich. That somehow, the rich supported all growth and good and, after all, the middle class supported those communist unions.
And the poor, all lazy bums who preferred poverty to work.
We went from a middle of the road culture to an extremist culture.
What have we learned since then? Supply side economics led to fiscal disaster. Huge debt. Enriching the wealthy at the expense of the middle class led to extreme wealth inequity, the badge of third world countries and banana republics everywhere. And stubborn unemployment. And way more poor, that, as I said, we were told, prefer poverty to work.
Those trends are now turning around now thanks to a President who supports the rebirth of the middle class. And the avoidance of a potential President who only wanted to preside over the wealthy.
But the preachers drone on 24/7/365 trying to complete the destruction that they started. And some minds can't be changed back.
So we are now testing our democracy to see if it can save us from extremism.
It has started to but vigilance is still required. The recruiting of middle class syncophants by the wealthy is still active and supported by the GOP.