One point of...not correction, additional commentary?

jobs for working folks have been shipped abroad to countries where slave labour is legal.

Slave labour is still legal in the US. Their prison population might technically be paid, but the pay is so ridiculously miniscule and (as far as I'm aware) they're only allowed to spend it within the system. That said, they're not manufacturing phones or TVs or fly zappers or the millions of other things that are made in countries that are often intentionally kept poor.

In that desperation, they chose poorly. Added to that is the fact that they have a very limited and shame-based social safety net. There are fewer chances to earn an honourable wage.

There's also the decades long effort, of a certain political party, to suppress and distort education. There's a fair amount of the population essentially programmed to vote against their best interests. And that's not even accounting for stupidity like the electoral college and rampant gerrymandering....

We absolutely need to learn from the lessons being shown by the US, I hate to use the slippery slope fallacy, but some slopes really are slippery....