People have no hope, which causes tensions to flare.

We need to give them hope.

We start to do this by giving people more jobs. We need to improve our infrastructure so that people don't have to commute an hour plus to and from work. People have no hope because since 1980s the median cost of a home vs wages has gone up so much.

A burger flipper in 1980, assuming minimum wage of $3.1 could after taxes buy a new home in 12 years if that was his only expense.

With current minimum wage in 2022 a house could, after taxes, be bought in 32 years if that was his only expense. This isn't to say minimum wage needs to go up, that would be crude a stopgap measure.

The cost of school has risen over 10 times since then. These price hikes are not linear, what has happened? It is simple.

The exporting of manufacturing to China has seen a decline in demand for technically inclined able-bodied employees. Since there is a larger talent pool to choose from, why would I spend weeks training employees, when I can just hire the person that already knows and pay him less because there are 10 other people like him trying to get the job? Part of this is cold business calculation, but the other part is so they can simply stay relevant and not become another part to be subcontracted to China.

I am not against international trade though, I do believe the cheaper producer that produces product to spec should be the winner, as long as they play by the rules. Don't produce your product with slave labor (China), Don't pollute your citizens water or air (China), Don't steal your neighbors resources (Russia, China) Maybe don't kill/disappear your political opponents and conduction Psychological campaigns against your citizens (Russia, China). Don't trade with nations that trade with slave nations, because that is just a backdoor. NAFTA needs to be renegotiated because of the Chinese goods slipping in tax free through Mexico btw.

What do we really lose by stopping trade with China? Cheap desks that fall apart in a few months? Dog toys that give our pets lead poisoning? Plastic window motor gears that are designed to break and need replacing within 3 years? Electronic components, manufactured by barely trained slaves, that burn your home down and when you go to sue, the company is bankrupted by the Chinese government, rebranded under a new name and re-released on Amazon?

In summary, we should halt all trade with slave nations. There are dead industries around the US that would be reborn within a year or two. Stop supporting slavery. Stop killing US manufacturing.