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YOU SAID..."Everyone wants to be a millionaire, but nobody is willing to pay the price of products or services made by millionaires. This is why so many of our jobs have been moved overseas, and why so many jobs right here in the U.S. are filled by illegal immigrants. We simply don't want to pay "American" prices for the products and services we use every day, but we insist on believing that we can charge "American" prices for the products and services we produce every day"

Interesting post and comments....good point of discussion.

Lets take Case A.
In this case...ALL products and services consumed by Americans are produced or provided by Americans...ie.. little or no free trade. Conjecture what the median wealth level of an American family would be...normalize it to 1.0.

Now take the other extreme...Case C.
Here..practically all of the goods and services consumed by Americans are provided by offshore labor which is cheap...or by importation of non-native guest workers or illegals who are also cheap. Now guess what the mean wealth level of an American family is....its a tricky question. Think its greater or less than 1?

Now consider a median Case B...here some jobs are outsourced or utilize cheap seasonal workers...but others remain within America. Conjecture what the median wealth level is here. It obviously depends on what percentage of jobs move offshore or utilize guest workers....and the nature of the displaced jobs. What would you guess the best case is relative to Case A?

My rationale in questioning the prevailing wisdom of global free trade with this discussion is basically this....

IMO, if you were to plot the mean wealth of an average American family vs the percentage of American jobs outsourced to either foreign located workers or local guest workers you would get...a highly nonlinear curve....a camels hump of sorts...it may even have more than one hump.

At some point on this curve...corresponding to a condition somewhere between Case A and Case B...there is a point of maximum efficiency and wealth creation. Some folks may feel it is close to Case A..others may feel it is closer to Case B.

Do you honestly think it represents Case C...some on this forum apparently think so. At this extrapolated limit...nobody in this country would work...except for government mandated workers, politicians, and trial lawyers.

With this highly non-linear relationship...the idea that the more jobs we outsource the more money we make applies over a limited range...around the maximum of the curve, but NOT BEYOND IT...which is usually the case for nonlinear equations.

Now the real question to be answered over the next couple years.. when our trade in goods and services with China, NAFTA, and now CAFTA accumulates...is where exactly are we now on this nonlinear curve?

Have we reached the peak of the curve already...and are we now on the downside?

I hope this concept is clear...it is in my mind one of the key concept of global free trade that needs to be studied.

Its a concept put forward by an engineer...not an economist.