MBAs tend to move in when companies are in trouble. It’s a signal not a cause.

The companies I know who are still benevolent make money hand over fist. Management, employee, shareholders are all happy as peas in a pod.

It’s when the money stops flowing that hard decisions are made.

NAFTA really destroyed the middle class and middle america.

NAFTA was a symptom of globalism more generally. What we ended up with is selective globalism.

Want to import cheaper drugs from Canada, that's illegal! Yeah sure they might have been produced in the US in the first place but it might be dangerous!

Want to get a degree in a country where the price of education is lower? We won't honor it.

Want to hire the services of a Kenyan clinic doctor who has experience in everything from treating runny noses to gunshot wounds? Illegal he's unqualified according the the national doctors union (AMA).

Yeah you can get cheap crap from places that hire children to work in their factories, but the stuff that is really expensive we are 1700's Japan all of the sudden.

I argue that there is a larger effect: Bill Clinton making the decision that the Democratic Party turn its back on blue collar workers and the middle of the country because just having Wall Street support would be sufficient to win elections. He was not wrong, but it has had a bad effect because the republicans also started to ignore the working class in favor of the financial class.

Nationalism, something to be avoided, occurs when the underclass is not represented in a political system.

Bill Clinton did not give Republicans the idea to ignore blue collar workers. He got it from them.

The middle class are the ones who are doing fine or great. It's the working class who got screwed over.

Working class was middle class.

If you're middle class, with stocks, a professional job, your own house, you probably have been doing absolutely fine over the last couple of years. It's everyone else who's in trouble.

It might be worth noting that in the US, "middle class" is used in the same way as "working class" is used in the UK i.e. blue collar, non-professionals.

Not where I live. Blue and white collar people can both be middle class.

What happened to "company towns bad"?

Some companies did offer benefits to their town, for roughly the same reason the FAANGs offer free lunches and dinners. Kind of a double edge gift.

I have no idea where the "companies used to take care of their employees" commenters are coming from. There's plenty of counterexamples.

"The toxicity of concentrated TEL was recognized early on, as lead had been recognized since the 19th century as a dangerous substance that could cause lead poisoning. In 1924, a public controversy arose over the "loony gas", after five[94] workers died, and many others were severely injured, in Standard Oil refineries in New Jersey.[95] There had also been a private controversy for two years prior to this controversy; several public health experts, including Alice Hamilton and Yandell Henderson, engaged Midgley and Kettering with letters warning of the dangers to public health.[17] After the death of the workers, dozens of newspapers reported on the issue.[96] The New York Times editorialized in 1924 that the deaths should not interfere with the production of more powerful fuel.[17]" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Initial_controv...)

See also radium, polyvinyl chloride, assorted mine disasters, etc.

This is different from a company town which is created and governed by the employer, rather than, let's say, adopted by a predominant employer.