What Happened When Capitalism’s Worst Salesmen Tried Selling The American Dream

When Rexnord moved its Indianapolis ball-bearing plant to Mexico, John Feltner lost a $25-an-hour union job, the second factory job he had lost in a decade. Around Christmas of 2017, a hospital offered him maintenance work at $18 an hour. When a former boss offered him a union job at a cornstarch plant paying 20% more, John refused. “I don’t see it crumbling underneath me like Rexnord,” he told The Indianapolis Star. John had already been burned twice, and a hospital, he figured, wasn’t going anywhere. Three decades of deindustrialization had taught him and millions like him to take the...