The Wall Street Journal's "The Informed Reader" blog is doing my job for me.  Their summary of our debate on globalization:

The discussion was kicked off by Jeff Faux, an economist who says globalization has pitted the world’s poor against the rich, symbolized by the accords struck between American executives and Chinese “capitalist commissars.” Mr. Faux, who founded the Economic Policy Institute, which advocates environmental and labor safeguards in trade rules, contends that the expansion of trade has put an unfair burden on American working families who “sacrifice their future in order to raise up the living standards of poor Chinese.”

University of California, Berkeley, economist Brad DeLong countered that Mr. Faux’s approach would harm poor Chinese workers. He rejected Mr. Faux’s description of a united front of wealthy Chinese and U.S. elite, since even the wealthiest Chinese aren’t very rich by U.S. standards — the top 0.1% of China’s workers earn an average of $30,000 annually. Redistributing that wealth among all Chinese would only raise median standards of living in China by 1% above current levels, Mr. de Long says. Further increases would be impossible without international trade.

What’s more, keeping Chinese workers poor isn’t in America’s long-term interest: Britain’s trade with the poorer U.S. in Victorian times lifted the U.S. economy initially, and sealed a longstanding relationship between the two nations. Also, should China emerge as a superpower, it would be bad news for the U.S. if it turns out that Chinese schoolchildren are one day taught “that America tried to keep the Chinese as poor as possible for as long as possible.”

But Mr. Faux contends that if trade is truly beneficial to the average Chinese worker, why have manufacturing wages in China remained stagnant? As for boosting the lot of Chinese workers now so that a future Chinese superpower will look kindly upon the U.S., Mr. Faux says nations rarely make policy decisions out of gratitude.