Just five years ago, white collar outsourcing was confined to data processing and call centers; today, courtesy of IT-enabled connectivity, it has moved to the upper echelons of the knowledge-worker hierarchy. The Internet is living up to its reputation of being the most disruptive technology in the history of the world.

The implications of these developments are profound. Long lacking in income support, the spending-addicted American consumer has turned to equity extraction from asset holdings in order to support the habit...

Globalization imposes a new paradigm of competitive survival on the high-cost developed countries of the world. Americs.. is... feeling the heat... Companies in high-wage economies see little choice other than to rewrite social contracts as the means for competitive survival. For the United States, it’s the end of labor as we once knew it.