Roland: The alarming fact is that 90 percent of the people in this country now report that they know someone who is unemployed.

Sharon: But a normal, moderate level of unemployment is 5 percent, with 1 out of 20 workers unemployed. So at any given time if a person knows approximately 50 workers, one or more will very likely be unemployed.

Sharon's argument relies on the assumption that

• Anormal levels of unemployment are rarely exceeded  
• Bunemployment is not normally concentrated in geographically isolated segments of the population  
• Cthe number of people who each know someone who is unemployed is always higher than 90 percent of the population  
• DRoland is not consciously distorting the statistics he presents  
• Eknowledge that a personal acquaintance is unemployed generates more fear of losing one's job than does knowledge of unemployment statistics