> You can do what the democrats have talked about, which we have successfully done in Nordic countries which is to spend a lot of money on re-educating the workforce and making sure those at the bottom get decent skills.

One of the issues with this is that while yes, you can get the people to become more skilled/educated, ultimately the jobs that take advantage of that skills and education are in cities, not in small towns or rural areas where so many of these people currently live. And that's probably not gonna change.

Now, you could say, "well that's fine, we can give them moving stipends or something" but a lot of people are reluctant to leave what they've known as homes for so long. Such a strategy essentially puts these areas into hospice mode. That's an uncomfortable thought for probably most Americans.

And moving public sector jobs, while it might work, is probably politically untenable in America; the areas that are dying are the same ones that are generally hostile to government.