>The world has gotten better in almost every way including the rapid fall in poverty rates, more reliable sources of food and medicine, and better access to technology for even the poorest folk
Cool story. Have your own people seen equal (or equal-enough) growth in their respective living standards?
Better yet, has the brand of politician your particular subculture supports done enough to make sure that everyone in your Union has benefited enough to see your version (right or wrong) of the bigger picture?
You know, where the solution to their job-loss problems isn't simply "abandon your own subculture, move to the city where there's work"?
Where the solution to unemployment isn't simply "here's some unemployment benefits, now go try to find self-worth in a society that doesn't need you any more"?
Because the results of that failure are pretty clear.
Something is happening where most places not in the Northeast or Southwest urban sprawl are getting hit hard economically- the absence of a similar pinch in those urban areas is striking, to say the least.
Turns out that eliminating jobs that the people there used to be doing is only really good policy in places that can sustain themselves with another industry, which the service industry does quite handily but only in dense enough areas.
Combine that with a lack of (misplaced?) social responsibility from industry leaders (and union management), and these cities that are still doing well start to accumulate political debt simply as a result of that inequality.
Remember, every time you need to pull the country in a given direction, you need to spend some political capital.
Compromises must be made when a given problem affects one side more than it does the other (as you have to convince those who aren't in agreement for whatever reason- thinking that being objectively right has ever mattered is mistake #1, which is why "alternate fact" is even a valid turn of phrase).
And currently the side of Progress(tm) has no capital left- it was spent on creating the above inequality and frivolities like social justice. Even though climate change is really the priority the Left claims it is, the Left will first have to actually deal with the inequality in the country it claims to despise before the Right will even bother listening. This is going to be the real challenge.
And until that time, telling your jobless neighbor that his life has no more worth than someone in a third-world country might be technically true, but telling him that, or that third-world countries come first, is not doing your cause any favors.