Open argument

IN 2011 Ronnie Dunn, a country singer, recorded “Cost of Livin’”, a poignant song about a former factory worker’s search for a job. Sensing there will be many more jobseekers than job openings, his can-do pitch gives way to desperation: “Bank has started calling/And the wolves are at my door”. Similar refrains can be heard all over America’s industrial heartland: almost 6m manufacturing jobs were lost between 1999 and 2011.