One observation about globalization.. I spent a couple weeks in Thailand helping a factory there solve some production issues. Their labor is cheap, about $10 per day. But they used 6-8 times as many people as a similar plant in the States would use for the same operations. Contrary to what the folks who know nothing say about what happens in American factories, our workers here are highly productive. As time goes on, their wages will creep up and the extra manpower will have to go away. Another thing is that energy is often a bigger part of the cost of a product than labor and in the developing world where labor is cheap, energy usually isn’t.

The companies that made a mad dash to offshore jobs will soon enough begin to realize that the cost advantage will continue shrinking until its gone.