aka the "trickle-down economics" religion. Not that I ever viewed TDE as anything more than a self-serving cover story for greed, but globalization has pounded the last nail in the coffin by removing one of TDE's unexamined assumptions: That businesses had no choice but to trickle-down the wealth in order to retain the services of the people who produce the wealth.

Don't like the taxes that pay for the social welfare programs that keep alive the workers you've laid off? No problem, bunkie, move to Dubai and take up residence alongside Halliburton.

Workers getting uppity and demanding wage increases to match their productivity gains and resulting profit? Eff 'em, bunkie, move the jobs to India and pocket that profit instead of pissing it away on the employees who created it.

It's going to take a few years, but today's beneficiaries of offshoring are going to learn that their prosperity is solely at the pleasure of the corporations, and they'd better not get uppity lest their jobs in turn be offshored. It's already beginning: Some Indian outsourcing firms are already, in their turn, subcontracting some of the work to even lower-priced workers in even poorer countries.

It's a race for the bottom. Three cheers for free-market capitalism!