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Gotta disagree with the awesomes @WilcoxNMP as he disagrees with me in this thread /1:
First I’m a bit mystified by his assertion that I underplay the “major economic, political, civic & cultural forces” in the fall of our working class. What I reject is the populist focus on elites in Tucker’s piece. Here’s what I say in my piece /2: 
Elites aren’t irrelevant, but the Carlson focus on elites is just wrong. It’s factually wrong and has its own negative consequences as it focuses popular anger an energy away from the things that are most likely to help any given family succeed /3.
The civil rights revolution (a bottom-up movement) changed the nation in good ways, but it’s still a change. Feminism changed the nation in good and bad ways. The Information Age changed the nature of skills and training necessary to be economically competitive /4.
As for the previous ascendancy of American manufacturing, never forget we gained immense strength as many of the world’s most advanced societies were in ruins after WWII. When they recovered, they became extremely competitive. /5.
Productivity gains also meant that we could (and do) produce more with less. But if we didn’t become more productive we’d even be less competitive. Simply put, we could not possibly freeze in amber the golden age of American manufacturing. /6
This isn’t elite spite or indifference. It’s economic reality. Even the best policies would have merely tinkered at the edges of these tectonic shifts. /7
Oh, and we also can’t forget that some American manufacturers (in all their immense power) became complacent and arrogant. They made inferior products and then screamed “buy American” when families purchased products that were best for their lives. /8
(My family bought Dodge cars in the 1970s, and they were horrifyingly bad. I’ll never forget the amazement of buying a Toyota and never having to take it to the shop.) /9
On top of this, we get a sexual revolution. Yes, that had immense elite backing, but it was adopted with extreme enthusiasm across social classes and over the strenuous objections of Protestant/Catholic religious leaders who sounded warning bells as loudly as they could. /10
So we get a shifting workforce because of civil rights/feminism, a more competitive manufacturing environment, changing personal morality, and immense growth in new industries that require different skill sets. /11
Who was most able to respond and succeed in this environment? People who resisted the siren call of sexual revolution excess, and who dug in and finished at the very least their high school education. In fact, these qualities lead to considerable upward mobility. /12
For example, here’s the illustrious @WilcoxNMP noting that poor millennials who follow the “success sequence” are upwardly mobile. /13
We can’t forget that our upper-middle-class is growing (something I mention in my piece), and one of the reasons why it grows is that of course people from lower economic classes who demonstrate certain core disciplines enter the upper-middle-class at scale. /14
So we have a number of HUGE changes in American cultural life, one of which is a collapse in marriage culture that is self-defeating and helps make poverty stickier, and the populist says that elites are to blame and government can fix it. This is just flat-out wrong. /15
We know how people can enjoy upward mobility. We don’t know how government can systematically improve the mobility of people who don’t finish their education and have children out of wedlock. And we don’t know how government can motivate the success sequence at scale. /16
There are policies that help or hurt, but great minds have been trying to figure this out for a really long time. I remember the shock of the closing mills and plants in the Eighties. We’ve talked tax credits, retraining, marriage, family, education for generations. /17
Remember these Springsteen lyrics from “My Hometown”? Haunting. This isn’t from 2019. It’s from 1984: /18
If you meet a young man from a rural county (like the KY county I grew up in or the TN county I raised my kids in), what do you tell him has the most impact on his future? His choices? Elite choices? Government policy? It’s his choices, and it’s not close. /19
I agree @WilcoxNMP on much. We agree on the gravity of the crisis. We agree that we’re seeing massive cultural/economic shifts. We may disagree about populism. We may also disagree on the extent to which gov’t policy can help. But he’s still awesome and I learn much from him. /x
