[forgot_again]

>"we dismantled all that stuff"

Not intentionally though. Globalization has led to most of it.

Manufacturing leaving for cheaper climes hollowed out the middle class, made unions impotent, etc.

Hypercompetition has forced companies to be ruthless.

In academia, administrators have taken absolute power for themselves and now enrich themselves at the expense of education and research.

It's quite a mess we've stumbled into.

[api]

That's part of something larger I've heard best described as market fundamentalism: the belief that markets and markets alone can take over and handle all aspects and functions of society.

Globalism was implemented in a market fundamentalist way. No special attention was paid to rights, fairness of trade, etc. because it was assumed that trade and markets and then (magic happens here) and then everything is great and liberal democracy spreads everywhere.

What really happened was corporations and international finance going trans-national and exempting itself from the rule of law and then leveraging foreign totalitarian or lawless regimes to break workers power at the wage negotiating table.

The real long term winners were totalitarians and would be totalitarians though, not the corporations or finance. Capitalists selling nooses and rope, as Marx quipped.

[toyg]

Pretty sure unions were nuked by Reagan and Thatcher before globalization and outsourcing were even a thing.

As a society, the boomers made a choice in the late '70s / early '80s: egoism should be rewarded and money is the measure of all things. Everything else was a consequence.

[api]

You are both right. Labor was crushed by multiple forces.