This insightful article by my colleague Joseph Stiglitz is short and incredibly thought-provoking. In it, he argues that globalization essentially pits the lower-skilled workers of the world against each other, having the same effect as though lower-paid workers migrated in mass numbers to wealthier countries. The economic effect is to reduce wages of unskilled workers to a lowest-common-denominator.
It is eye opening, as for decades now we have been taught that globalization is both uni-directional and beneficial. What we have not talked about enough is how to humanely deal with the human adjustment costs. It is way overdue to start that conversation.