Cliches can aid in understanding complexity. Consider the always-helpful cliche that every coin has two sides. So, in this spirit of the obvious, let us - for once - look at the other side of the coin regarding the constant drumbeat that Asia is causing American workers to lose jobs.
Well, that happens to be true, but only in one sense - many economies in Asia have a competitive advantage in the cost of their labour. So this coin's bad side is that some people in America have to look for new work when the jobs they are doing can be done for less money in Asia.
Of course, one obvious remedy for this consequence is protectionism, but this, historically at least, has proved to be a cure worse than the disease.
What's very sad right now is that most of the time in the US you hear only about that one side of the coin.
But how exactly are Asians helping Americans? For starters, Asia's labour profit has not produced unrelenting evil and misery for America. In fact, Asia throws most of that fortune back into United States Treasury investments and American stocks for safekeeping and interest-gaining.
Stashing all those Asian billions in America has helped take a lot of the sting out of the otherwise alarming US budget mess. Not only has Washington reaped the benefit of Asia's huge stash of cash, but so, too, has the rest of the country.
Americans wind up paying much lower prices overall. This has helped keep US consumer prices low despite all the periodic upsurges in oil and gas prices and the inflationary effect (until recently) of ridiculously high property prices.