Lori Wenzel lives in a nice house in a nice subdivision in Grand Blanc, Mich. She's worked hard to get there. She hired into an auto parts plant, now Delphi East, in 1977 when she was 18 years old, some 28 years ago. Now the Delphi bankruptcy, the largest industrial meltdown in U.S. history, threatens to shatter her world and the world of her coworkers. Delphi's skid into an economic ditch raises a fundamental question: How do U.S. firms compete in an increasingly rough-and-tumble global economy? Historically, U.S. firms have succeeded through innovation and high productivity, not low wages. Indeed,...