Failure to see the "big" picture is why people don't understand/hate businesses; the global market. We ***** about companies leaving the US, but we don't look into the consumer side of the equation - and the left just paints it as businesses being greedy. Reality is in the middle.
1. Global businesses have difficulty choosing America as their home base because:
a. labor costs are much higher here
b. /if/ they price their products to account for higher labor costs, then they are undercut by other global businesses lower labor costs
2. Global businesses have difficulty investing in American economy because:
a. importing cash into the US is double taxed (once by other nations and then again by the US when bringing it in)
b. some of the highest corporate tax rates in the world
c. our economy is going to shit and we're just spending and printing more instead of being fiscally responsible and fixing the problems
MW increases only exasperate this problem. Every time we increase minimum wage, businesses raise prices, which means that MW workers need a higher MW. Its a cycle we've let go on for far too long. We have hit the ceiling, American produced and based businesses are at the point where they cannot compete in a global market, unable to sell said products at a profit in the global market, they have no choice but to lower their expenses. The easiest way to lower expenses is lowering labor costs, because that in itself is 40% of your average businesses expenses. Move to another country, and pay import taxes (if there even are any) and then you can price your products at a globally competitive price.
We cannot regulate the pay other countries give to /their/ people, therefore we /will/ lose businesses, we will lose jobs, we will lose our economy. We're in a downward spiral that I don't know if we /can/ recover from because American's have become entirely too spoiled; leasing cars, buying new cellphones every year, $200 purses and sneakers... The excess, and worse, the sense that they are "entitled" to those excesses, drives the cycle endlessly. We cannot export products at a reasonable price, American's don't want to pay "more" so they buy from non-American companies who have the lowest price. I do not know how we can get out of the cycle, but if we don't do something to /try/ and get out of it we are going to economically self-destruct and I don't think the country will make it through that; our society doesn't have the cohesion and unity to survive it.
This feeds into everything; the immigration issues, the back-lash against anti-nationalism, fear, hate, all of it is tied to our economy and the more "strings that bind us together" we cut, the weaker our binding together as a nation will become. Eventually, the rope is going to snap and we're /all/ going to fall. Band-aids on things like transgender bathrooms and Trump are not going to address the gaping wound that we American's have allowed to infect our nation. We chose to ignore it, chose to dig a deeper hole, chose "today" (this four year term) instead of looking to the "future." Now, we are going to have to pay the piper and it's going to suck for the majority of this nation.