I don't like the sound of this.

What a load of crap. What matters for investment decisions are total costs, not wages in isolation. Even if the "economists" doing these calculation are right, the "balance" they talk about will be just as restored by cutting the combined tax load facing the employers making hiring and outsourcing decisions. Without costing workers a red cent. Same goes for insurance against all kinds of frivolous lawsuits, and any other number of non after tax wage costs that add up to the total cost in the US of employing someone.

And, of course, coming from trashy, status quo apologist scum like these, the "answer" is of course inflation. Just silently steal 20% of productive people's wages in an underhanded way, without some management weasel having to explain himself face to face with his workers. While relying on the lack of economic education any of these workers presumably received, in the indoctrination institutions that passes for schools these days, to keep them unable to pinpoint why it just gets harder and harder to make ends meet every year. If that isn't contemporary America in a nutshell, I don't know what is.

Why should I give a crap about the global economy? I care about the U.S. economy. What a pile of bull.

"Global wage convergence is great for the poor but tough on the overpaid rich. It's possible to run the numbers to show that U.S. manufacturing workers should take average real wage cuts of as much as 20% to get into global balance."

Isn't it wonderful that we have hard-working journalists like these two to really get to the bottom of our problems! Americans are overpaid! Thats why there are 30 million Americans on foodstamps! Only when we drive wages down to the level of Moldova or Vietnam will we turn things around!