But what struck me was the interview with voters. I don't know what makes me sadder: the fact that they think Trump sincerely wants to help them, or their belief that he could bring back steel jobs if he were sincere. Contrarian intellectuals tell regular intellectuals that we need to "listen" to what the working class voters are saying. But when I listen all I hear are pathetic fairy tales.

Steel employment fell almost 90% since its peak.Back in 1967, the US steel industry employed about 780,000 workers, and produced about 115 million tons of steel.* By 2015, employment had fallen to 90,000, producing about 79 million tons of steel. In both years, the US consumed about 130 million tons of steel. (I'm not sure these figures are exactly right, but I think they are close enough.)

The bottom line is that even if we still produced 115 million tons, or even upped it to 130 million, the level of employment in steel would be in the 120,000 to 150,000 range. The vast majority of those 780,000 steel jobs were lost to automation, and they aren't coming back.