[ameister14]

4b.Why are they hurting? Why is median household income so low?

Well, in the small town I grew up in, cheap imports and exported labor coupled with automation killed the main sources of jobs. Retraining is incredibly hard and requires a willingness to uproot everything and risk it all as well as the ability to not get paid for a while to move forward.

[evilduck]

Uprooting is harder than it seems too. House and property valuations plummet shortly after the company propping up a "company town" departs. Finding a potential home buyer in a dying town becomes quite difficult, for adults, leaving becomes equivalent to walking away from everything, including a mortgage.