America traded its factories and good-paying jobs for cheap imported goods, and this is bad for regular workers even as it made asset owners richer.

• Since 2000, anything shipped from China got dramatically cheaper — TVs, toys, and software all dropped sharply.
• Everything that couldn't be imported got much more expensive — housing, child care, college, and hospital bills all soared.
• The core trade: America gave up its factories and the kind of jobs that once let one income buy a house.
• Winners were people who own assets, who got richer on paper; losers were consumers who got cheap stuff but lost stable, high-paying work.
• This is framed as what happens to an empire that runs on finance instead of making things for nearly a century.

Outlook: The gap between cheap goods and expensive essentials like housing and healthcare is expected to keep squeezing workers who depend on a paycheck rather than assets.