Impossible to re-establish a solid middle class in the USA...

India, U.S. cheap labor?
The income of others isn't my business.
What differentiates the upper lower class from the working poor from the middle class?

 

Immigrants both legal and illegal prosper in the US. Remarkably. They typically have a work ethic that distinguishes them or an appreciation for education and/or excellence that distinguishes them.

 

Ok you got a point.

 

I believe if more were invested in the research and development of green energy we could most certainly rebuild the middle class. In everything from construction workers running caulk guns to make every building in the United States energy efficient to researchers in labs, substantial number of unionized, good paying jobs would be created that could never be outsourced. This would increase the purchasing power of many people, creating a demand for more products, causing businesses to expand and hire more workers. More workers would mean more tax revenue which could be spent on things like infrastructure (more jobs) and especially education. This economic system has worked before, it was called the "Golden Age" of the 1950s and 60s.

 

No matter the R&D, someone needs to purchase the technology. Last I looked, approximately every $100K of GDP was equal to one US job position. A billion$ in GDP growth should equal approximately 10,000 workers. If you wished to employ an additional 5 million US workers, GDP would need to increase by approximately $500 billion, or 1/2 trillion$. And...this math assumes that ALL of the green manufacturing and installation, etc. is done in the US...and today this is simply not happening. Maybe only 1/2 of green spending creates US jobs, which if true, this means to add 5 million US workers that green GDP would need to increase by $1 trillion!

Now...$1 trillion in GDP growth is huge! Maybe not over several years but in one or two years...huge! IMO it is unlikely Americans are going to fork over $1 trillion for green energy in the short term. I'm all for green energy but I don't personally see the green energy market greatly growing the US middle classes. Solar energy today is almost treated like a commodity in which sales are based on total cost and very little on technology, etc. which translates to low prices, which equals low profits, which equals low costs, which equals low wages...

 

Middle class manufacturing jobs are so rare as to be currently negligible. Large scale employment of middle to upper middle class employment, by US standards, by large employers will soon be extremely rare.

Upper-middle, and even middle-middle class paying jobs are being devalued and substituted by computing software and the global workforce.

This is a "global" economy issue and cannot be corrected by any single countries efforts.

 

You really do not understand the concept here. The value of manufacturing is not in the difficulty of the work, it is that manufactured goods are often sold in export markets. Manufacturing creates wealth where service based jobs only exchange money.

In a service based economy you perform a service for me and I pay you, and then I perform a service for you and you pay me. No money is really created, only traded back and forth, it does not increase the overall wealth.

Manufacturing on the other hand is different. If I produce a tractor, and sell that tractor to Brazil, then the money which I am paid is an increase in the overall wealth of the country because it is in fact new money.

This is what increases the standard of living and wages across the board.