Americans are richer than ever. The problem in America, however, is that the distribution of that wealth has become completely lopsided so it’s concentrated in a few hands. That’s a domestic policy issue.
Outsourcing manufacturing is different, however, from shopping away strategic assets and not investing in keeping strategic manufacturing capacity alive, which once again is a failure of US domestic policy.
"Poverty and economic inequality are not identical. When the city is turning off your water because you can't pay the bill, it doesn't make any difference what Larry Page's net worth is compared to yours. He might only be a few times richer than you, and it would still be just as much of a problem that your water was getting turned off."
Except outside of the most abject poverty that is fairly rare in the developed world, utility/disutility is more a function of relative economic status than absolute economic status. So, in the only sense that matters, this is at least oversimplified; you have to improve absolute wealth on the lower end considerably just to offset the disutility of increased equality and break even. It is possible to increase inequality and have everyone better off in utilitarian terms, but improvements in the usual economic measures are not sufficient to show that because those are poor proxies for utility.