...although I don't think NAFTA is the whole story. Whatever the root policy reasons are, the fact is that people are struggling and our lives are getting harder and more complicated. Even after the ACA, it is impossible for a large swath of the population to have health insurance that they can actually use, apart from catastrophic illness -- and even then, they are likely to have insufficient coverage to keep them out of the bankruptcy courts. As just one example.
NAFTA is one expression of the current corporatist global order. It is a great illustration of how these agreements are put together by elites who do not give much consideration to the effects on the masses. They subscribe to the trickle-down theory, which they word in a much more friendly way, telling us that "a rising tide lifts all boats". But what we experience is a lot different from that; we see no rising tide, but instead we see piggish elites who cut themselves off from the rest of us, live in gated communities or huge mansions (depending on just how rich / elite they are), fly private jets rather than on airlines where they might have to encounter the Great Unwashed... and whose policies just happen to give them the advantage, every time.
The only rising tide we'll be seeing is the one that decimates the state of Florida when climate change really takes off. At that point the elites will flee to their safe havens, believing they can buy their way out of a scuffle with Mother Nature. Which, of course, they cannot. But they'll last longer than the rest of us, and apparently, that is good enough for them.
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