>The "invisible hand" of capitalism has nothing to do with fairness, yet it has lifted whole nations out of misery into prosperity.

The invisible hand is the hand of government. Set the rules any way you want, and you'll see market adjusting to those rules. Now with rules set by big corporations (no matter which government and/or party serves them) you can see how it's possible that the economy is strong while people are worse off every day - the profits are higher, salaries are lower and fewer, but the first fact always outweighs the latter, so they say economy is doing fine.

>I get the sense that you believe a lot more in Robin Hood than in Adam Smith.

Adam Smith believed in capitalism by common sense, that the owner will take care of his livelihood. And he was right - but who are the owners and who's taking care of business? The very ownership is alienated: millions of people own insignificant bits of dozens of corporations, where they decide nothing - and physically couldn't, even if they had the right. Then people with millions and billions in their pockets own huge chunks of many corporations, and often their interest is to buy and strangle a business just because they bet on the market that it will fail, or because it hurts their other businesses where they bet on success. So they often make money on letting (some of) their businesses fail - and I don't see Adam Smith envisioning that. And even these big cats don't really know their own businesses in any level of detail - they probably don't know the people who work there, and in some cases don't even know how their factories look. They have managers, who then have no interest in the long term welfare of these businesses: they only have to look good when they receive their golden parachute.

There's a simple measure that can be taken immediately: charge customs on the goods manufactured abroad just like any other import, regardless of the nominal seat of the manufacturer. If it was made by an American company in Malaysia, tax it as import from Malaysia, period. Making it profitable for businesses to leave the country is counterintuitive, and actually stupid... unless paid well by these businesses. If this tide isn't reversed, your choice is to learn Chinese or some other language, and get used to appropriate standard of living.