Ideally we’d have taken some portion of the large societal benefits and used that to help out those who bore the costs of the transition. But while there was a lot of talk about worker training, it doesn’t seem like much actually ended up happening.

So there was a large economic benefit but that was mostly captured by business owners and, to a lesser extent, the professional management class. And the fact that the working class both bore the brunt of transition pain and saw the smallest net benefit created a significant political problem, which has shown up across most of the developed world.

Although, pushing back on that narrative a bit, it’s a commonplace right now that there’s a significant shortage of people in the trades, machine shops, etc. And these are just the sort of solid, well paying jobs that don’t require a college degree that people think about being list with globalization. So there are jobs like that going begging for workers, which undercuts the pure economic explanation for MAGA. The white working class kids could become plumbers or electricians and have the lives their grandparents did.