[robomartin]

> US unemployment has been about 5%

Anyone who has studied and actually used statistics beyond toy exercises understands how these single variable statements are 100% misplaced. I won't go into the details because it might be pointless and I have to get work done. The main point is that grabbing this magical single variable 5% unemployment number to explain 50 years of deindustrialization is, well, nonsensical.

It's like the old example about the fallacy of averages being applied to the entire sample: A billionaire and a minimum wage worker walk into a room. Someone comments that the average net worth in that room is half a billion dollars.

Right.