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American wages are not 1/3 of the world's wages. They are, as you well know, inordinately high, which is why jobs leave the U.S. You can't have it both ways.

American wages are not 1/3 of the world's wages. They are, as you well know, inordinately high.

That is because the cost of living and the cost of American regulations is inordinately high.

Let's see.

Our taxes are high
Our land values are high
Our cost to keep up with govt. regulations is high
Our wages are too high?

Our wages until recently have been relative to the value of our economy. You say our wages are inordinately high? Only with respect to the slave labor countries. If you artificially lower our wages by using a standard set by third world countries and keep everything else high, what happens to the our people?

They are, as you well know, inordinately high

A fair statement today, particularly when a worker in China earns 60 cents an hour (according to Senator Hollings). The Mexicans are now complaining about corporations leaving Mexico for lower cost operations. Its called the 'race to the bottom'. The Senator put the Mexican wage at $2.50 per hour. I guess American pay is relatively high by today's international standards. I wonder how many of those foreign laborers invested in the American infrastructure over the last 200 years?

Perhaps it would not be unreasonable to establish an economic policy that would result in a more gradual exposure, not to competition from foreign markets with similar standards of living, but to competition from the low cost labor that can now be exploited in third world developing nations. Americans had built up their own standard of living over time and naturally grew accustomed to it. So what is our obligation to see to it that we and they can remain economically vital?

A gradual exposure to low cost foreign labor would still result in favorable short term profits while enabling families sufficient time to adjust to new realities. In this way, we Americans can remain vital as we continue to invest abroad and purchase lower cost goods. One problem that I see though is that foreign governments now can read American economic strategies on the net. Everyone seems to be taking the same road we are: they build universities and educate the young in the most promising technologies that will generate future returns. They also invest in third world developing nations. At 60 cents an hour, even a small business can afford to pay a student in a third world developing nation while they are attending high school, pay them to go to college, and then hire them to perform work. Who knows, maybe they will become competitive enough to build our nuclear submarines and launch their space vehicles...