In a world where technology and capital are highly transferable, there is a real risk that comparative advantage comes to be defined as whose labor f… - Robert Kuttner

But of course you can have your cake and eat it, too - if you decide to to bake a second cake. And you may well find that baking two cakes does not take twice the work of baking one.

Can we reverse these deeply rooted sources sources of inequality? Or are they just endemic to a capitalist economy?

We are already well down the road toward a managed-trade regime. It would be far better to acknowledge that reality, and seek a set of reasonable rules, than to pretend that Ricardian trade is the norm and allow mercantilist states to overwhelm U.S. industry and ratchet down wages, in the name of free trade.