How can we possibly compete

How can we possibly compete against low-cost foreign labor?

Peter Gallagher explains. Also enjoy Virginia Postrel, who points out that you can look at the integrated U.S. economy as a model of the world economy with free trade, free migration, and free capital flows.

"SUPPOSE we lived in an economic world with no borders, where goods, capital and people could move anywhere.

We've all heard the dire predictions of what would happen. All the businesses and jobs would rush to the places with the lowest wages. The poor countries would get richer, but only by making rich countries poorer.

Eventually we'd all be roughly equal, but formerly well-to-do Americans would be a lot worse off. Many Americans are afraid that globalization and free trade will have exactly this effect..."

But it hasn't in the U.S., despite wide historical disparities in incomes among states.