This wage gap will continue to exert downward pressure on American wages (and incomes), especially for lower-skilled workers, except for those insulated from market forces. 

The insulated include Chelsea Clinton, who is married to a hedge fund arbitrageur and who will inherit her parents' ill-gotten wealth without paying estate taxes, because Bill and Hillary established a foundation as an estate tax dodge while espousing estate taxes for others, just as goody two-shoes Warren Buffet has done for his kids.  Also insulated from foreign competition are those on the dole and those who work for the government, whose richer pay and benefits are paid by taxing the falling incomes of those not insulated from market forces. 

Amazingly, the serfs have not revolted against this arrangement, probably because they have been pacified, conditioned, brainwashed, drugged, and feminized by the modern version of Roman bread and circuses:  subsidized sports teams, cable TV, TMZ, pizza, pot, psychotropic drugs, credit cards, subprime auto loans, and erection meds.   

Contrary to what Trump and Clinton say, the wage gap would exist and cause domestic economic dislocations even if we tore up all trade agreements, sank our merchant fleet, built walls along our southern and northern borders, and torpedoed all foreign freighters that entered our waters.

You won't find an honest assessment of this problem in politics, in the media, and certainly not in the presidential race.  Consequently, you will not find solutions to the problems from these sources of pabulum, platitudes, nostrums, inanities, and fanfaronades.

Looking to the future, as this problem continues to fester and cause other socioeconomic problems, working-class and middle-class Americans will become increasingly disillusioned and disappointed with their leaders and government, regardless of whom is in office and which party controls the White House and Congress.  At the same time, Americans will embrace populism, protectionism and soft socialism, which will only exacerbate the problems.

This commentary is an attempt to fill in the knowledge gap.

Let's begin with some history.

For the first hundred years of its existence, the nation had a huge advantage in labor costs relative to Europe and other parts of the world, due to slavery.  After all, slaves had wages of zero.

The advantage in labor costs continued with an influx of Chinese laborers (aka Coolies) to build the railroads, and an influx of Irish construction and factory laborers escaping the potato famine in Mother Ireland.  Then, for about sixty years after the Civil War, the advantage in labor costs was sustained with dirt-poor tenant farmers in the South, and with an influx of other poor European peasants escaping wars, persecution, and poverty.  My grandparents were among the last group.

European immigrants, especially the Irish, resented the Chinese for their industriousness, their frugality, their good hygiene, and their different dress, features, and customs.  As a result, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which stopped immigration from China for decades.

Slavery had existed primarily because of cotton, which at the time was a worldwide industry that was as important as electronics, steel, and autos are today.  It was an industry marked by protectionism, mercantilism, and in today's parlance, crony capitalism.  (A compelling case can be made that the USA has never had true free-market capitalism.)

Huge fortunes were made in cotton, and thus indirectly from slavery.  Cotton brokers and textile mills were concentrated in New England, so in a real sense, many Northeastern bluebloods made their fortunes from the blood of slaves—fortunes that have often increased in value and been passed from generation to generation, which may explain why so many East Coast liberals and their Ivy League institutions exhibit white guilt and rail against white privilege.  Unfortunately, they project their shame onto the white working class and middle class, very few of whom had anything to do with slavery or profited from it.   

Although England ended its slave trade before the USA did, England wanted slavery to continue in its former colony, because it needed cheap cotton to feed its cotton mills, which were the Silicon Valley of the time, due to such technological advances as the spinning jenny, water power, and, later, steam power.  But in a precursor to how China has copied our technology, American entrepreneurs surreptitiously made drawings of advanced looms so they could be duplicated in the USA.  Because of this technology transfer and America's lower wages, England quickly lost its comparative advantage in finished cloth, in spite of trying to protect its advantage with protective tariffs.  It would later lose its steel and auto industries for similar reasons.

Our industrial might and prosperity accelerated in the twentieth century due to our favorable political, economic and social systems, especially our rule of law, our property rights, our limited government, and our lack of a large ruling aristocracy to keep the classes fixed in place, as was the case in aristocratic Europe and Latin America.  Then the economic afterburners really kicked in after the Second World War, when much of the industrialized world was devastated and we had little competition.

Our national memory remembers the post-war period of the 1950s and 60s as the economic norm for America, but it was an anomaly, not the norm.  For most of the previous decades, even with our governmental advantages and abundant natural resources, poverty was rampant, indoor plumbing and electrification were far from universal, and health and nutrition were so bad that a quarter to a third of all enlistees in the Second World War could not meet physical standards, according to some historical estimates.

For example, on the eve of the Second World War in 1939, the average hourly wage of American production workers was only 39 cents, or $8.02 when adjusted for inflation and purchasing power.  On the positive side, government took only 20% of national income back then, versus about 50% today.

Now we're being hammered by China and other emerging economies like we used to hammer England and the European Continent.

Rather than pore through additional wage and income statistics to see what we're up against, I suggest that you watch the superb but sobering documentary, "Last Train Home."  A jaw-dropper, the documentary shows what the Chinese endure and how hard they work to make a better life for their families. 

The documentary spotlights the millions of rural Chinese parents who leave their children behind to be raised by grandparents as they move to cities for grueling work in factories, living in crowded dormitories with little privacy or free time.  Then it shows astonishing scenes of what the parents go through to return to their villages to visit their families during the New Year's holiday.    The journey to and from is an indescribable ordeal.  For example, tens of thousands of Chinese stand in inclement weather for days at train stations waiting to find space on a train.

Meanwhile, we complain about sitting in traffic in our air-conditioned cars.  Moreover, millions of Americans living in declining areas no longer have the moxie of their immigrant forebears to move to where the jobs are.

Another compelling documentary is "Up the Yangtze," which spotlights Chinese peasants who were dislocated by the construction of the Three Gorges dam.  Many ended up in jobs on cruise boats and in hotels catering to Western tourists, who are oblivious that they come across as spoiled, pompous conquerors to the Chinese and are unaware of the abysmal working conditions and long hours of the workers behind the scenes.

Neither documentary covers the horrors of the Communist Revolution, the reign of Mao, and the Cultural Revolution, where students with the idealism and ignorance of today's American millennials persecuted intellectuals, shopkeepers, and anyone suspected of capitalist yearnings.  For good films on those years, watch the documentary, "China, a Century of Revolution," and the drama, "To Live."  After watching these, you'll marvel that China was somehow able to survive as a nation.

The good news is that the wage gap between China and us is closing and that we still lead in productivity, especially in services, thanks largely to automation.  The bad news is that industry is shifting from China to lower-wage countries such as Vietnam and Mexico.  The good/bad news is that the Chinese central bank and central government have embraced Keynesian economics, indebtedness, and easy credit, just as we have.  This means that if this economic folly leads to an unhappy ending for us, it probably will lead to the same ending for them.

What can be done?

First, in general, we have to make short-term sacrifices to live within our means and save money for investments in a real education and in productivity improvements for industry.  This means that we have to give up some of our free stuff, we have to cut back on our subsidized bread and circuses, we have to shrink the share of national income taken by government, we have to stop picking fights around the world, and we have to work longer, harder, or smarter than the Chinese and other foreigners.

In this regard, I'm willing to give up my Social Security income if everyone else makes comparable sacrifices relative to their station in life.

Such a message is not the way for Trump or Clinton to win Ohio, or Penn., or any other state for that matter.  But unless we are willing to vote for politicians who embrace and model this message, American will not be great again.  It's as simple and painful as that.  Americans know this in their beer bellies but are waiting for someone else to go first.

Some corresponding specifics are as follows:

The Federal Reserve has to go back to its founding mission instead of trying to centrally manage the economy and cover up the deficit spending of Congress.  Likewise, it should embrace a monetary policy that rewards savers, workers, capital investors, and entrepreneurs instead of spenders, arbitrageurs, and financial hooligans.  To do so, it will have to throw Keynesian economics into the septic tank of history, where it belongs.  The importance of this change cannot be exaggerated. 

Tax and regulatory policies have to be changed along with the above to further the same goals.

Smart, industrious people have to be encouraged to immigrate here, to compensate for our ageing population and to help pay for our looming retiree costs.

Those capable of working must do some kind of work in order to collect welfare and disability payments, even if it means sitting at a government desk answering the phone, or picking up litter, or painting over graffiti.

The government's monopoly over education has to end.

Deficit spending has to stop.

For deficit spending to stop, we have to give up some of our free stuff and subsidized bread and circuses, which takes us full circle.

While waiting for this to happen, I'll take some erection meds and watch subsidized football.