I went to, and left, college under Reagan.  That's when the jobs started evaporating, bled away in trade agreements.  I went out into the world as the guts of American industry began its death spiral.  I watched as the cannibalism started.  Regular jobs left, replaced by those kowtowing to hi tech and the military industrial, software, telecom, biotech...   Bankers raided pensions, people's hopes for home ownership.  Our largest export now, I hear, weaponry.  Schools, the educational system retooled itself as a grim unimaginative factory to keep people up with those countries we'd cut trade agreements with, to eventually compete with the Chinese in their tech sweat shops.  Patriotism led merely to surveillance in a world perfectly suited for it.  My father, before he died, cried at the state of America.  G.I. Bill educated, a deep and firm believer in liberal arts, he understood just as anyone with sense might, details aside.