You cannot increase wages without the money to do so. The factories are broke too. Manufacturing has these fundamental deficits that make it very capital punishing compared to software or finance, or consulting.

Britain is a better example of this because it's much smaller. The country is pretty much London with wealthy desk workers, and then the rest of country with hollowed out industry that is borderline 3rd world.

Naturally the economy wants to kill inefficient businesses, and let the workers fall off the societal wagon. So the question is how do you stop that.

The right says protect industry so they can have jobs, the left says tax rich people so they can have handouts.