Why 3.5M Americans in their prime years aren’t working

You can have natural experiments, but I don't see any. Did they try kidnapping Congress and forcing them to do a total embargo on China? Seems a no.

As long as america continue to allow free trade our wealth and jobs will flow out of the country as countries seek cheaper labor and sell it right back to America with no restrictions. The standard of living is raising in other countries while lowering in the US. Labor is already getting too expensive in China for cheap goods so companies are beginning to look at other countries for cheap labor, or bring manufacturing back to the US and us automation to make up the difference.

The US really has no incentive to allow this to happen. We have the largest market in the world and could very easily do what China does if other countries want access to it. The US allows anybody into our markets while China bends them over the bargaining table requiring them to give up IP and form joint ventures with Chinese companies. What incentive does the US have to do "fair" trade? We have all the leverage in any negotiation but for years haven't used that leverage. At some point we're going to have to or the citizens are going to either rebel or accept lower standard of living, lower income, and lower life expectancy.

I'm starting to believe that the reason Washington DC does nothing about the opioid crisis is because it benefits them. If thousands of unemployed, heavily armed rust belt men were not strung out and dying from addiction they probably would have organized and marched on DC a long time ago and got payback on the politicians who have sold them out for personal gain.

> If men and women from the ages 25 to 54 took part in the labor market... [t]hat would be more fuel for the U.S. economy and a bigger source of workers for businesses crying out about a shortage of labor...

> Trade with China flooded the U.S. with cheap imports, forced domestic firms to shift operations overseas and put downward pressure on wages of less-skilled Americans.

There's an obvious capitalistic answer to this problem: If you're "crying out" for labor, then you may need to offer more money. This will encourage more people to work, or to acquire the skills you want—look at all those coding bootcamps, for example.

Claiming that there's a labor shortage and downward pressure on wages is an extraordinary claim, and it requires a detailed explanation. Otherwise, the obvious assumption is that somebody wants specialized skills for below-market prices. If markets are good at one thing, it's adjusting prices to balance supply and demand.

The US really has no incentive to allow this to happen

Except that it has opened trade for US companies, and the reported numbers are often laughably misleading. Apple, for instance, nets almost all of the profits from an iPhone, yet in the trade balance an iPhone magically counts as a $1000 deficit with China. Further, it yields cheaper goods for Americans, and more efficiency.

The US was literally built on free trade, and sits right near the top because of it, so to read these nonsensical "but what if" arguments borders on parody. It is just a profound ignorance of history and even the most rudimentary of economics. It is one of those amazing things where people really, really don't understand what they have until they lose it.