Who Really Murdered Manufacturing Jobs in America and Why That's Important in November

by Nomad

American workers have every reason to be angry. For a crafty politician, it's the kind of emotion that wins elections. However, the question is whether they have fully understood who was responsible for their plight.

The Angry Unemployed American Male

The last half century of American history has been marked by one undeniable economic trend: the death of the American worker. Between 1965 and 2015, experts say that employment rates for the American male spiraled relentlessly downward. 

In September, a TIME Magazine article pointed out:

America is now home to a vast army of jobless men no longer even looking for work—more than 7million between the ages of 25 and 54, the traditional prime of working life...The collapse of male work is due almost entirely to a flight out of the labor force—and that flight has on the whole been voluntary. The fact that only 1 in 7 prime-age men are not in the labor force points to a lack of jobs as the reason they are not working.

The Atlantic Monthly provides a little more information:

Poor men without a college degree are disappearing from the labor force. The share of prime-age men (ages 25-54) who are neither working nor looking for work has doubled since the 1970s.

This is, not too coincidentally, the core support of Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign.

Two Roads Diverged: Jimmy Carter’s Speech - July 15, 1979

By Nomad

Few people recall that night in July 1979. With uncompromising directness, President Jimmy Carter laid out the truth for the American people. It was time to choose between the two ideas of progress.

Crisis Abroad and Panic at Home

The year was 1979. By this time, it was clear that the protests in Iran which had begun a year earlier were not going away. Indeed, the revolution of the long-time US ally, Iran, was becoming an international crisis.  Protests throughout Iran had led to the dethroning of the Shah of Iran and in his place, Ayatollah Khomeini- a fundamentalist cleric- became the leader of the nation.

The revolution had thrown oil production into decline and, this, in turn, had driven up prices.

To make up for this loss, Saudi Arabia, and other OPEC nations boosted their respective production; however, the cartel had also announced that a series of oil price increases would accompany this increase. Gasoline prices skyrocketed and the perception of a shortage had led to widespread panic.

Beginning in California and spreading eastward, the panic soon turned to anger from the American public and this hostility was primarily directed at the Carter administration. One of the reasons for this was Carter’s decision to cut all imports of Iranian goods, following the seizure of American hostages when students raided the American embassy in Tehran.

A President in Search of Redemption

Carter's approval rating had dropped to 25%, even lower than Richard Nixon's during the Watergate scandal. Following an exhausting summit in Tokyo, the one thing President Carter desired most was a break. He had planned to travel to Hawaii for a vacation.

However, his chief of staff took a look at the poll numbers and warned him that his chances of re-election would be in serious doubt unless he took some action immediately.