America is now facing the dark side of free trade.

Globalization and outsourcing are hot topics this election season because so many middle-class Americans, instead of having the luxury of looking ahead to a brighter future for the next generation, are worried about supping into a Lower economic segment themselves. They are caught in a squeeze between corporations bent on extracting every Last ounce of productivity from U.S. employees and a vast new globalized work force that is eager and well able to do the jobs of American workers at a fraction of the pay. The sense of anxiety is growing and has crossed party Lines. Free-trade advocates insist that job outsourcing will, result in new, more sophisticated and highly paid jobs in the U.S. The simple truth is that enormous numbers of well-educated, highly skilled white-collar workers are having tremendous trouble finding the kind of high-level, employment they've been trained for and the pay they feel they deserve. No one really knows what to do. The fact that this critically important issue is finally becoming an important part of the national conversation is a good thing. Perhaps an honest search for solutions will follow.