Economy

The problem is that economics in general is taught from the viewpoint of the top. Innovation and entrepreneurship are neither top down nor particularly bottom up phenomena, most are done by people somewhere in the middle, who have enough disposable income to do something but live at bare subsistence. Bill Gates? Upper middle class kid who went to Harvard, found a guy with a primitive operating system for a computer that ran on a disc instead of magnetic tape and had the money to buy it. Sam Walton? Able to borrow $20,000 from family to buy a five and dime store. The Wright brothers? Had a bicycle shop. And it goes on from there.

Destroying the middle class in the US is what has stifled innovation and entrepreneurship and those are what have attracted direct business investment. The top is risk-averse. The bottom is broke. So's the whole system.

Both parties are going to have to get serious about rebuilding the middle class unless they want this country to settle into being a post industrial backwater. Neither party is going to like some of the ways this needs to be accomplished.