Stealing this from another forum, but it is fairly accurate.
TLDR version: A rural, blue collar middle class was a temporary function of post WWII. Due to automation and the fact that all our competitors aren't smoking craters anymore, it will NEVER come back. I get that this group of people is very disaffected by the modern economy but what is the solution? Is there a solution? Even if you set up complete embargos on imported goods, those factories will not come back and employ people in the numbers they used to.
You're right about the automated industrial jobs, but there has always been a rural, blue collar middle class and they have always made up the majority of the country. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, land was the primary means of economic production.
Small towns are economically viable provided there's a local industry that produces a net regional export to draw money in from outside the region. Every town needs at least one industry that brings reliable money in from the outside to balance things people buy from outside the town.
The blue collar workers in small towns have never been factory workers, although the people who are involved with the regional export industry sometimes work at a scale that requires automation. If you work in the grain elevator, the local mine or quarry, the pet food factory or the meat packing plant, those jobs can be affected by globalization if what you produce suddenly becomes cheaper elsewhere.
The vast majority of the blue collar workers in small towns are people who are exchanging goods and labor with each other. I'm talking about mechanics, bank tellers, plumbers, machinists, bartenders, family restaurant owners, and the people who own the dry cleaning shop. There's always a florist, a daycare service, and a funeral parlor. Sometimes there's a gym. There's someone who runs the dump, someone who empties septic tanks, and someone else who drives a school bus. You've got a handful of police officers, a fire department that might be volunteer, and some local industries. There's always a tire and auto parts shop, a motel, and a few things for people to do for fun like a pool hall or some bowling lanes. Maybe there's a swimming pool or park that requires maintenance. Someone gets paid to do that. There might be a small hospital or old folks' home, and if so, somebody gets paid to empty the bedpans and wash the floors. There's always a feed store.
The blue collar work in small towns has one attribute that doesn't apply in big cities: it's ALL entrepreneurial. The owners and operators are the same people, you won't see a lot of franchise businesses, and people employ friends and family. There's not a lot of "professional" work available that requires an advanced degree. Only about one percent of the adults in town need one to be an attorney, a veterinarian, or an accountant.
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As an aside, this while election process has made me realize just how crippled American politics is by our relatively short national history. The entire election narrative, and really the entire conflict narrative that we've been dealing with over the last 4 - 8 years, is based on assumptions we made about what America is that are derived entirely from a 20 year period of time about half a century ago.
The whole idea of a strong middle class based on blue collar manufacturing work is an idea that really only existed from about 1945 to 1965 (with a brief resurgence under Clinton from 1993 to 2000). That was the only time in American history that a blue collar middle class existed, was a sizeable portion of the population, and has more relative economic power than the upper class. And the real kicker, to me, is that it wasn't even real. Not in the sense that it never happened, because it did, but in the sense that it was a momentary ephemera caused by completely unique circumstances almost entirely beyond our control. It was the post-war economy, and the fact that every single one of our global competitors was either a smoking crater, or as yet untouched by "modern civilization". The only time in US history that a strong, solvent, largely rural middle class was a reality was at a time when we were literally the only game in town.
No, small towns have always been economically viable once they reach critical mass, provided they can create a net export.
Before WW2, most of the country lived in a state of either subsistence dirt farming, or urban conditions reminiscent of China circa a decade ago. By the late 60s, wage growth has effectively flat-lined, and was in full on decline by the time the 70s came around. Both before and after the period of 1945-1965, the only way into what we conceptualize as a "middle class" was either an educated profession (including the skilled trades in this one), or business ownership. Other than that tiny window, we have ALWAYS been a nation where comfort and security required education or entrepreneurship, and nothing we have ever done has made a damn bit of difference.
Most of the "subsistence dirt farming" was the result of a disastrous federal policy that encouraged people to move into land not suitable for raising grain. The dryland farming initiative helped create the Dust Bowl.
Entrepreneurship and small business ownership have always been the best path to material comfort. This is true in small towns just as it was in the days of the Founding Fathers. However, federal policies of the last decade or two have systematically stifled small scale entrepreneurship in favor of large scale corporate employment. Large scale corporate employment doesn't happen much in a small town. You might persuade a major corporation to build a data center, call center, or bill processing facility but for the most part you're better off with a meat packing plant. That way if people stop buying what you produce, the results are still edible.
So this decade, and likely the next one, are built on a narrative that is itself little more than the nostalgia of the boomers for two short decades of their youth, and one decade that happened to coincide with their peak earning years, that were entirely the result of complete random chance the likes of which we will never see again unless we bomb Europe, China, Japan, India, and Latin America to rubble. Think about that. Donald Trump is entirely the result of shiatty Boomer nostalgia for a time that barely existed and that literally no one can ever make happen again. Our entire political zeitgeist is based on a fluke from 60 years ago.
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Middle America isn't butthurt solely because of their nostalgia for the brief flash in the pan known as the post-war boom. They're angry because the collapse of the boom is being made far worse because of federal policies and initiatives. Every federal initiative set up to "help" the economy since about 1980 has benefited large scale corporations at the expense of small entrepreneurs, and hampered individuals' abilities to take actions in their own best economic interests. This tends to cause money in the private sector to flow away from the small entrepreneurs and toward the high and low extremes of the economic scale.
It is true that "red" states receive more in welfare and transfer payments than "blue" states, however the money tends to go to people besides the ones getting hurt by over-regulation or failed government policies.
