Yeah which is why it's stated as a problem to be solved, not some immutable fact of life. The issue is that we've seen incredibly little progress in this area.

Yeah which is why it's stated as a problem to be solved, not some immutable fact of life. The issue is that we've seen incredibly little progress in this area. There have been studies on the British coal mines that shuttered under Thatcher - the areas are still not back to the level of employment they had before the mines were shut. It's fine to say that shuttering those mines was a good thing - it probably was. It's also factual to say that those who felt the negative effects didn't benefit from the advantages of government policy, and ina human sense beyond employment numbers it means a lot of those people never worked again.