It's a vicious feedback loop that arguably does involve Amazon and other global retailers / manufacturing chains - although I wouldn't say they're at fault. Co

It's a vicious feedback loop that arguably does involve Amazon and other global retailers / manufacturing chains - although I wouldn't say they're at fault. Consumers are locally optimal buyers, we go for the cheapest goods on the market. Over time, international imports have been undercutting America-produced goods. At first, it was American companies that simply outsourced raw materials... then manufacturing, assembly, service centers, and now even R&D. All because consumers were chasing the locally optimal ROI. Rational consumers were undercutting their employers, which in turn forced their employers to cut labor, wages, or automate. That steadily drives down the purchasing freedom of employees, like a frog in a slowly warming pot of water. In turn, consumers are even more driven to seek out the cheapest goods, which are still international, and which continue the feedback loop that ultimately undercuts themselves. Eventually, we end up with an economy that cannot distribute wealth among the middle/lower classes due to large labor market inefficiencies (such as the difficulty adults face cross-training into/between knowledge-based fields)... All while the 1% and 0.1% continued building up tremendous wealth, buying a disproportionately loud voice in politics and public opinion. Amazon and Walmart are centralized manifestations of this issue, but no one person is to blame. This problem has been building for decades as America has refused to publicly invest in itself. As I see it, we need significant public investment in order to get back on track: * Infrastructure (water, energy, transportation esp. light rail), creating short-term jobs that improve regional economic competitiveness and reduce consumer debt * Higher education + adult cross training, restoring an efficient free labor market and voter literacy * Advanced R&D (incl. but not limited to space+energy), researching and commercializing new fields of industry to replace automated/exported ones We don't need to raise taxes. Start by cutting back excessive military funding. For perspective, we just spent ~$17.5 billion/10 years on one ship - the USS Gerald Ford supercarrier. Its defense ROI is questionable; counter-terror operations and force-projection against lesser states does not warrant a supercarrier (renovated carriers / allied regional airbases are sufficient), and potential threats punching at our level (China, Russia) would employee asymmetric warfare that makes carriers irrelevant (think: smart missile barrage, fast attack submarines, or maybe just propaganda). $17,500,000,000 could put 523,000 Americans through a 4 year private education or 1,750,000 through public state colleges. This sum is also equivalent to 30 years of fusion research funding, tripling the Seattle Link network, and 8x the the BART expansion to Santa Clara. Perhaps you have better examples, but these already offer better ROI than a war ship. There's plenty of fat that can be trimmed or reallocated from our $598,000,000,000 / year federal military budget.