Princeton economist Alan Blinder gave a talk on U.S. competitiveness this afternoon. His main point was that the offshoring of services to English-speaking countries with lower wages (India, mostly) is a much bigger deal than most academic economists allow. "The potential shift is massive--dwarfing anything we have seen in recent years. Not dwarfing the industrial revolution, though."

The shift in the U.S. labor force, Blinder said, will be away from services that can be performed remotely (and thus will done where wages are lower), and toward those that demand a personal touch. So instead of skilled workers making more money and low-skilled workers losing out, as has happened over the past few decades, the divide between winners and losers will be more complicated. Brain surgeons and child care workers will do fine; call-center workers and computer programmers won't.

And college professors? "I'd like to think university teaching would be degraded substantially by remote delivery," Blinder said. "But in my heart of hearts I'm not sure the next generation of American academics won't be replaced by lecturers in Bangalore."