Comment by kranke155

Both issues can be true. A single scrubber is not a good counterpoint to entire industries having left.

However, yes, the US (and the West in general) were uniquely victims of elite betrayal, where the financial and business elites decided it was best for them to outsource manufacturing, while telling the urban mass and politicians that this was "everyone's best interest". The current political and now geopolitical disaster followed.

The financialization of America and the UK in the 1980s was a failure in all respects. Stock buybacks made legal, factories closed, Wall Street as an engine of growth. It was all fiction.