It seems clear that globalisation has coincided with and probably caused increased inequality within the US, but has it decreased inequality within the global system - i.e. by enabling China/India and their workers to move up the food chain?  

Secondly, if inequality is inefficient, has the increased inequality in the US reduced the ability of the US to compete within the global system?  Would higher wages within the US enable it to compete more effectively within the global system, or is the problem excessive capital rents in the US?

Is globalisation reversible, or must any solutions we devise to the problems coming with globalisation also have to be resolved in a global context?  I.e without an effective system of global financial governance is it possible to address the impact of globalisation in a national context?

It seems to me that the larger problem is that we have has economic globalisation without political globalisation (or indeed environmental global resource management) and it is the dis-juncture between global economics and the lack of global government which is the real problem.  

And it is precisely the emergence of any global governance that the neo-cons and neo-libs have fought most bitterly - in the name of nationalism and patriotism - when in fact their real objective was to move their assets abroad without regulatory interference and into a much less regulated space.

If this is correct, then the real challenge is not to try to roll back economic globalisation, but to roll forward a much greater degree of global economic, political, and environmental governance and to expose political nationalisms as a cover for economic betrayal.

notes from no w here