Laborers like the Zhangs provide us with cheap t-shirts, jeans, tube socks and Christmas tree ornaments, but we are fooling ourselves if we think their thankless labor is bringing them prosperity. Rather than "flatten" the world and spread opportunity, as some suggest, modern globalization has made the world increasingly lumpy: Income disparity is on the rise all over the world. Unlike factory workers laboring in, say, 19th century New England mill towns, Chinese peasants who migrate thousands of miles from their home villages to make cheap stuff for Americans stand only a modest chance of improving their own lives or those of their children, while taking a substantial risk of losing any semblance of control over their futures.

Roughly 25 percent of the global workforce is Chinese. Given such enormous firepower, China inevitably sets the norm for wages and working standards in the global supply chain. Multi-national corporate interests have chipped away at those standards and wages in order to maximize profits and serve shareholders. The chronic disregard for workers' rights in China's foreign-invested sector threatens wages and working conditions around the globe, so it really should be no surprise that ninety percent of Americans have since the 1970s suffered economic slippage--in wages, benefits, job security.

Americans love a bargain, but sometimes what looks like a bargain is really just a bad loan. The on-going economic meltdown gave evidence that a globally integrated world economy is not secure when built on a foundation of "more and more" for "less and less." There is nothing innovative about building business plans on the backs of an insecure, low wage workforce. "Everyday low prices" are built on everyday crumby lifestyles, for Chinese factory workers, and increasingly, for many of us. As the Last Train Home so beautifully and tragically illustrates, this race to the bottom elevates no one.