Why the Left Loses elections

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Suspect you’d also need some degree of protectionism to shield home businesses which foreswore these technical methods from direct competition with foreign businesses which embraced them.
I’m dubious as to whether the general European tendency for relatively high levels of welfare spending and minimum wages could survive (in the sense of being of benefit for the local private sector elites) without the EU’s system of tariffs, duties, agricultural subsidies and consumer protection regulations.
And the French state possessing the 4th ranked nuclear arsenal on the planet probably doesn’t hurt when it come to trade negotiations around these issues.

Can we just outlaw automation, outsourcing, et al?

it seems impossible to stop these things.

It's like unless you're a whiz-bang tech guru, you're worthless.

yeh, if only adam and eve had stayed far away from that tree of knowledge [of good and evil]. because along with the good comes a barge load of evil.

In theory: yes, any country could do so.
However I’d draw your attention to Chinese history: the later Ming and early to mid Qing dynasties both pursued policies of a similar type with regards to the cutting edge technical innovations of their times, and used protectionist measures to aid this along.
And for a time it worked out tolerably well, however ultimately it led to a situation where the imperial court had access to neither the funds nor the military equipment to maintain its sovereignty in the face of external aggression and militant state backed market expansionism (principally on the part of my country and it’s drug dealers).
And although China has regained much of what was lost in terms of sovereignty and territorial integrity since then, it’s taken over a century and dragged most of the countries people through several hells to get there.

And then import everything because no one can afford local products?
Or ban import too and become an isolated economy with smuggling as the dominate business branch?

Thanks, my parents lived in a system where you had to smuggle basic goods (items like cotton towels or panties). I don't recommend.

Indeed: another example would be Britain.
During the last few generations of the British Empire a system of protectionism was developed known as ‘Imperial Preference’.
Due to the sheer size and global dominance of the empire this didn’t cause problems with the supply of daily necessities, smuggling and black marketeering.

Instead it allowed much of British industry to slack off on investment in favour of higher profit margins, and thus fall behind global price-quality standards: as the empire disintegrated after WWII
these industries were nationalised and kept on tax and state debt based financial life support to maintain employment rates and living standards.

Once the state had exhausted its capacity to borrow, and it’s citizens tolerance for tax rises, these industries were streamlined, asset stripped or shut down. This process was (and still is) deeply controversial, involved several periods of mass rioting and the year long miners strike.

Mass inner city unemployment and the accompanying festering mess of resentments and grievances have been a feature of British national life ever since.

So that's how the UK went from being the most advanced manufactoring country in the world to Europe's rust belt?

Pretty much: there are other details in the mix, such as the takeover of the regional cities stock markets by London and the transfer of all the trading activity directly and indirectly flowing from that to the capital in the 1870s. Some historians and journalists argue that this set up an absentee landlord dynamic amongst major investment funds.

A lot of the cash released by the asset stripping of the 1980s, that the government had hoped would be reinvested in replacement industries, ended up speculated, and lost, on the south-east Asian currency markets in the early 90s.
(If my memory is on form that’s what Nigel Farage was involved in at the time)

The problem with automation and outsourcing is that they have all but eliminated the middle class as we know it.

Whatever jobs are left are either contract or very low paying. And the only people whose wages are going up are the super rich.

Actually, automating and outsourcing affects mainly the lowest-paying jobs of factory workers, not the middle class.

Yes but it's not polite to call factory workers lower-class so we pretend that they're middle class.

I guess I need to learn a lot more about traditionally capitalist societes today.

By the way, wasn't the term "working class" coined exactly for this purpose?

DELINEATION OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLASS
*underclass= people under the socio-economic radar, IOW folk who are homeless/living with friends, living in some kind of shelter for people down on their luck, in DSHS-subsidized housing, on welfare or disability pension or with sporadic unskilled employment- generally struggling on the margins, with pervasive poverty of income as well as in ready access to cultural amenities.

*working class= lower middle class- semi-skilled worker bees in general- tradesman, janitors, mechanics, repairmen, sanitation workers, enlisted military members, aides of various stripes [home health/nursing/teachers' aides], LPNs, assembly-line workers, phone bank workers, sub-GS-06 civil servants, most salespeople- you get the picture. usually below 6-figure income. some of these folk have college degrees but they are not profiting from having them. most are "getting by" and some are fairly comfortable [with quasi-middle-class lifestyles such as the house and 2 cars], albeit with many dual-income families.

*the middle-middle class= working class folk [some with college degrees applicable to their field of work] who did exceptionally well [like successful commissioned salespeople], bachelors-level teachers and professors, social workers, RNs, supervisors of various stripes, semi-professionals such as specialist hospital technicians and journeyman tradesmen, military officers, post-GS-06 civil servants, small business people [mom and pop operation, for example], most professional musicians, and the like. the luckier/exceptionally talented among these folk may have incomes somewhat above $100k.

*upper-middle-class= professional class- people with professional/advanced university degrees/fellowships- doctors, lawyers, engineers of various stripes, especially those with a few decades in [with their student loans all paid off], administrators of various stripes, established [large-firm] business people, mid-level government officials, masters/doctoral-level educators. mostly 6-figure income.

*upper-class/overclass [leisure class]= show business/entertainment, artists with wealthy patrons, trust fund swells, rich families [old money], people who hit the jackpot in general [new money], government and corporate bigwigs - know what i mean? mostly well-educated, with university degrees the social rule rather than the exception. usually 6-figure [and above] income.

a cultural look- in the area of food, the middle class judges food by flavor and variety. the working class measures success in not having delicious food, but just having enough to not be hungry. the upper class cares mainly about how well the food is prepared and presented. the working class will consider itself lucky if it can eat fast food now and then. the middle class considers itself fortunate if they can eat at their fave high-class restaurants. the upper class may have favorite restaurants in multiple countries.
in terms of residence, for the working class it is more often than not transient. middle class has the condo and the house in the 'burbs. upper class has the estate, and vacation houses in multiple countries.

^ Oh, so RG was right. Okay.