Well, many of these points have been addressed already, but I wrote this thing last night and the the Cat went down. It's long, so I'm posting it anyway :)

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There is a broad assumption running through this thread, and it's one that is quite a popular economic theory: namely that wealth and economic growth is infinite. The economic policies under Bush, Clinton, Bush and Reagan have all depended heavily on this idea and it WILL come home to roost eventually, if it isn't doing that right now.

There are essentially two things that drive business:
1) available workforce labor
2) available money from past labor

There are two things that can drive expansion:
1) more consumers overall
2) consumer demand for items they don't have yet

When Coca-Cola targets their advertising overseas, they are recognizing a simple fact: there is a finite amount of sodas that Americans can drink each day. More consumers exist overseas, so they'll go there for business growth.

Marketing in the US almost soley centers around convincing consumers they "need" something they don't have yet in order to be cool or smart or happy or whatever experience the ad is promising their product provides.

But the cold fact of the matter is that there's an upper limit to this. The population of the world is not infinite and it's only going to grow so fast: that means in terms of labor AND consumers. The economy of the US is balanced on the backs of fake money, and there's only so much more debt consumers can carry before the credit companies go out of business, taking the whole system down with it. No doubt taxpayers will bail them out when it happens (that means you and me, kids).

No matter what anyone says, America is not "wealthier" than it was in the 50's or 60's or 70's -- we just have more stuff, and we don't need the vast majority of it. If you get a pay raise at work, and then buy a more expensive car because you can afford it, you may be earning more money but you don't HAVE more money. The same principle works on the national scale.

So when you hear pontifications about internationalizing economics, it's about opening up availability to more consumers for existing companies, not about bringing more businesses to the table. It's not about helping foreign economies grow or letting folks in Botswana get bigger TVs or any other philanthropic ideal -- it's about making money and nothing else.

As for your other question, jimmyt, I often hear businesses whine about their employees having any control over their work at all. They'll scream about unions or the occasional piece of legislation that prevents the worst of abuses, but then turn around and spend millions buying politician's votes, hiring lawyers to fight employees, pay their CEOs 500x what their secretaries (that actually do the work) make and have corporate meetings in pricey resorts. Meanwhile, they'll act like spending $40 on an ergonomic keyboard for someone who types 8 hours a day is a major expense that has to be budgetting and forecasted to be purchased sometime in the next quarter. The employee, of course, should work through the pain and permanently injure himself so the company can save a few bucks on something that's tax-deductable anyway.

With all the legal entities, tax sheloters and vast amounts of legislation that exist to protect corporations, I don't assign any of the blame on jobs going overseas to a few unions or minimum wage laws. If you like the idea of an 8 hour work day and having Christmas Day off to spend with family, thank the unions that fought for it first. Corporations want utter, helpless slaves and they fight for it -- yet they'll insist that the employees don't have a right to fight back.

If you want to help your local economy, the best thing you can do as an individual is to stop spending your money at chain stores and mega-corporations and instead visit your local bookseller, music retailer, farmer's market and clothing store. And get your friends and family to go. The money you spend will stay in your community and end up doing things like going to fundraisers to buy those band uniforms for the local high school.

Having the world at our fingertips is great and we can't and shouldn't try to shut it out: but that doesn't mean that the grass is always greener because it's grown in Chile.