Jagdish Bhagwati, professor at Columbia University, argued in the Financial Times: "It is not globalisation but labour-saving technical change that puts pressure on the wages of the unskilled." Afterwards, he responded to readers questions on FT.com: If it is technology that is causing US middle class wages to stagnate, can you explain why companies are moving labour-intensive jobs to low-wage countries such as India?

Michael Johnson, Minneapolis, US

JB: First, it is the rich countries that wanted such trade to be freed up because we expected, quite correctly, that we would export huge amounts of high-value, skilled services . . . The balance of trade is hugely in the US's favour.

Second, the fear that we would wind up importing even most of our skilled online services is unfounded. There was much alarm on this when a Mass General Hospital radiologist outsourced reading X-rays digitally to India. But the facts show that not one radiologist has lost his job or found his earnings reduced.

Third, the Indian experience shows that even simpler jobs such as call-answer services are subject to rapidly rising costs. Wages have been rising quickly in recent years.

Profits as a percentage of gross domestic product are at a 50-year high in the US and multi-decade highs in Germany. To what do you attribute this?

Eric Lonergan, UK

JB: The share of total wages in national income, which used to be pretty constant for decades, has certainly recorded a small decline, even after we consider the fact that, when fringe benefits are taken into account, the deadline is definitely less.

I have no better explanation of this phenomenon than what I produced in my FT article: rapid, continuous and deeply unskilled, labour-saving technical change seems to me to be the most compelling explanation.

What is the most appropriate policy response to this trend?

JP Landman, Johannesburg

JB: First, politicians must draw the union leaders frightened about globalisation into dialogue and try hard to convince them that their fears, while perfectly legitimate, are at best exaggerated and, at worst, mistaken.

Second, we need policy and institutional changes to help the workers to cope with the effects of such rapid and deep technical change.

The unions can no longer meaningfully define security for workers in terms of specific jobs--it has now to be defined in terms of workers themselves.

Jagdish Bhagwati is an adjunct scholar at AEI.