A free global market produces winners and losers but ultimately it narrows the economic gap that divides the world.
There are always going to be segments of the population whose incomes will go down in the global economy. Having fewer government controls on trade, however, does not mean we have to do away with social safety nets. Absent remedial action, there is no doubt that the knowledge-based economy is going to magnify the skill gaps that exist across countries and among individuals. Income inequalities will rise unless educational gaps shrink.

“Just to say I can move my jobs abroad does not necessarily mean I should.”

Inequality is not a disease of our economic system; it is one of the system’s basic characteristics, and it does not automatically disappear as countries grow richer. Deliberate measures have to be taken to reduce it, less for economic than for political and moral reasons; it is difficult to believe economic inequality can just keep growing without limits in democracies.

Education and training have to be the prime answers to rising inequality, and in the United States these skills have to be coupled with mechanisms for incorporating some of what Europe has been able to achieve in reducing wage differentials between services and manufacturing.