The Shins! James Mercer actually explained how he conceptualized this song in an interview with MAGNET Magazine: “I read an article—I forget where, exactly—but it was just basically about how in the United States we used to manufacture a lot of stuff, like a lot of the microphones that I buy on eBay because they’re good, high-quality microphones, but they’re old. Nobody makes them anymore because we don’t make anything, basically. So it was about that issue, and it was about the argument that they were making. It was that big-money interests that lobbied to have free trade with Asia. So we were able to buy goods made in countries that had no respect for civil rights, and the relationships with the unions [in this country] could finally be skirted around and we could end that. So now we’re in the situation today where you cannot make a living, basically. We used to make every fucking thing we used, and we lost all that. Fucked the country, saved their asses, fucked the whole economy.”