+1 to all the above though I would place immigration at 3 (in terms of impact) and move outsourcing to #1. Here's another overarching theme/cause that's often

+1 to all the above though I would place immigration at 3 (in terms of impact) and move outsourcing to #1. Here's another overarching theme/cause that's often missed in these discussions. Financialization of corporate sector. There was this well known push by wall-street to show more and more profits which most of the big corporations succumbed to. The phrase is "maximising share holder value". This in turn lead to cutting down costs which has had big cascading effect such as outsourcing, cutting down on pension funds etc., What's not that well known is that about 30% of the corporate profit of US firms is now purely from financial investments and activities. Most of this money does not make it to the real world economy and people. I can go on for quite a bit longer on this topic but I'll let you form your own opinion. Here's a good short video as a jump off point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIk7WlINPQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIk7WlINPQ If that interests you then here's a good little book "Capitalizing on Crisis": https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066199 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066199