■"The Art of Outsourcing: We are not exporting jobs, but importing competitiveness," op-ed by C.K. Prahalad, Wall Street Journal, 8 June 2005, p. A14.

Great piece by a very smart guy. To outsource is to tap cheaper inputsópure and simple. Dress it up all you like, but unless you plan on beating China and India on that "flat world" that Friedman's talking about using higher cost labor and resources wherever possible, thus "saving American jobs," you best go with economic logic on this one.

Trade ain't about saving jobs, but about getting better ones over time by moving up the production ladder.

Ah, but the romance of the past is always hard to give up. Everyone wants to do what their parents did, right?