It's very easy to judge, but when you're in the situation that you've lost your job of 20 years because the plant you work at is no longer competitive, your ban

It's very easy to judge, but when you're in the situation that you've lost your job of 20 years because the plant you work at is no longer competitive, your bank is about to foreclose on your house, and you have to pull your kids out of university because you can no longer pay the tuition. Then the promises of the Trump campaign (and Brexit) become very persuasive. The scary thing is if the politicians themselves actually believe in what they're saying. But maybe they're right, the US has the benefit of being a huge country with most of the resources it needs to survive within its borders, perhaps you tear up trade agreements and start a policy of being more reclusive to protect your industries and employment. I see one huge advantage that the US has in a global world though, and that is (at least for now) it is by far the dominant player in the web space. Countries like Russia and China have their own services that are playing catch up on their US counterparts, but they are still well behind for the most part. In any future imaginable the web, or a successor is going to continue to be the biggest part of our lives and therefore the worlds money will continue to flow into the US. Despite what I just said, I too worry about the US. There seems to be a deep seated suspicion of anything socialist and most of the solutions to a massively automated society seem to be socialist ones (i.e. a universal basic income, or the government regulating businesses to provide for the common good). You'd hope that if it came to that scenario the US would follow suit and provide for its citizens that cannot work. But there is precedent for the opposite, the world went through a similar scenario in the 30's with the great depression. Most countries in the OECD came out of that decade with comprehensive social welfare systems, the US did not.