[tim333]

>In the US, a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support owning a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, a car, and multiple children

A lot of the change there is not down to China but limiting the ability to build a cheap house through nimbyism and regulation and then competition from other dual income / high earners bidding everything up. You could fix it by allocating everyone a bit of land and letting them build whatever on it even if it was just a shack. It's not really trade that's the main problem.

[danaris]

What? No; the problem is vastly more attributable to the tremendous transfer of wealth from the working classes to the wealthy that has occurred over the past 50 years.

Look at any graph of earnings by quintile over time, or of income or wealth inequality today, and you'll see that the fact that builders can't cut corners and sell us crappy houses and apartments that will fall down around our ears is far from the primary reason we have trouble affording things today.

[Whoppertime]

Wealth is not zero sum though. LeBron James being great at basketball doesn't make you any worse at basketball. Jeff Bezos starting a company in his garage selling books online that became one of the biggest in the world worth many billions doesn't make me any poorer. Financial transactions are win-win. That is why there is a mutual thank you when making a purchase. The cafe owner would rather have my 2$ instead of coffee in their pot. I would rather have coffee in my cup instead of 2$. If neither of us thought we would not be better off the transaction would not happen