So... What did happen in the 70's...?

[zipplewrath]

3. Ronald Reagan

The easy answer is Reagan happened.

The more complex answer is that the industrialization of other parts of the world reduced the amount of middle income jobs here. Post WW II, huge portions of the world were incapable of producing very much and the US produced alot of goods for export. But the first pangs were probably felt in the steel industry where international competition began to undermine the steel industry here. The garmet industry was also an early victim. By the '70s, most of the world had "recovered" from WWII and that's when the industrial decline of the US took off, along with the jobs.

We were all watching it happen, and the constant explanation was that these jobs would be "replace" by higher skilled jobs. Those jobs never appeared. We're actually seeing some of these industries returning, in part due to our lower energy costs here in the US (mainly from natural gas). However, as they come back, the vast majority of the industries are being built in highly automated factories with a fraction of the workers they used to have.