There is (or was) also the effect of China and other Asian countries in our trades. I'm not sure how is the situation right now, but prior to the recession they were hitting us very hard in that field. Given that two of our major assets in the international markets were precisely cheap labor and outsourcing manufacture, but the fact that Asia provides it better than us and even cheaper... well, you get the idea.
There are other serious issues too, like our social security system that is on the brink of colapse, the conflicts with some of the labor unions (which I don't lie, are nests full of rats), or the sad fact that a lot of families depend of the income they receive from their relatives in other countries (which seems to decline every year).
Now, there do have been many protests (sometimes escalating to riots) in the past two or three decades. But they never escalate to something that the government is unable to control (either by negotiation or by force). Their effects also tend to be rather isolated and negligible in most cases. Many times they only affect a specific part of the country while the rest is untouched.
That is part of the reason why a good percentage of the population has become so apathetic: People seems to protest every month, yet nothing ever gets done or changed. At times it seems that, like tjchaos pointed, we need some very serious crisis to hit us before things progress, and even then.
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