It is still nominally a white collar occupation but has, indeed, suffered in terms of prestige, compensation, and socioeconomic makeup of workforce versus other middle class mainstays, against a backdrop where the upper edge of the middle class is doing exceptionally well for itself.
Citation available if I Google for the academic papers but the handwavy version is “I write about this sort of thing for a living so uh self-cite for the moment.”
They're paying state, local, and federal taxes, are they not?
That might be true in your state, but at least in Michigan it goes into a huge pot which is then redistributed to counties/cities. https://www.rcocweb.org/DocumentCenter/View/188/A-Guide-to-R...
>If these mega corps don't operate in your city, they aren't contributing to it financially in any way.
But by your own admission they contribute at least a portion of the budget for local schools? I'm sure state and federal funding ends up at the city level through a multitude of other programs as well (eg. medicaid). Moreover, such companies have to exist somewhere. Your city might not have an office of megacorp A, but it might have an office for megacorp B. That doesn't mean you should only buy stuff from megacorp B, because it's more efficient for companies to consolidate their operations and adopting this attitude would make everyone worse off.
Living in a community that isn't poor and decaying?
When money leaves a community, it means that it won't be used to employ people in that community, buy goods in that community, or generate tax revenue for public good in that community. The market's relationship to the community can become much more extractive.