The American Prospect's Harold Myerson has a op-ed piece in that publication today, Can Free Trade Be a Fair Deal?. In the op-ed, he links American middle class wage stagnation to globalization, specifically, to global wage convergence. The one policy proposal he offers seems paradoxical. For what would the global minimum wage policy he advocates do but hasten global wage convergence? At the same time, he rejects the proposals offered by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his fellow Hamiltonians at Brookings

• providing wage insurance to help workers who've been compelled to take lower-paying jobs than the ones they lost
• extending trade adjustment assistance to service as well as manufacturing workers
• adopting a universal health-care system delinking insurance from employment, so that U.S. companies can compete globally without having to be the only corporations in an advanced economy that cover their workers' medical costs.
• reforming our education system so that American workers can be more competitive

as not "remotely sufficient to the challenge of a globalized economy." Maybe not. But they sound like promising places to start. And they would probably have an easier time getting through Congress than a global minimum wage would in the next round of GATT talks.