Last summer, a respected policy expert from the Brookings Institution spoke at a large meeting. He introduced himself, saying that he works with a lot of brilliant economists who can't understand why the recovery is so slow.

Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman has an explanation,"...corporations use their growing monopoly power to raise prices without passing the gains on to their employees."

This January, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced the Immigration Innovation Act, known as "I-Squared." It will triple the number of foreign temporary workers from about 800,000 to more than 2.3 million. This will distort the labor market for jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), which has only 4 million workers all told. I-Squared will seriously depress the domestic STEM labor market.

The United States and 10 other countries are negotiating our next big trade agreement, called Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. It's time to re-examine what works and what doesn't work.

Imagine a thought experiment, where we put environmentalists in each country in charge of negotiating the next trade agreement. Preposterous! I know. Stick with me. This is a thought experiment.

My career is invested in the aerospace industry, so it was very sobering to me when the Federal Aviation Administration ordered that 787 airplanes be grounded.

Friends ask me to explain the situation— what lessons can we draw from the 787? Invariably, we start with "outsourcing."

We've heard a lot about loss of labor rights in Wisconsin, "right to work" for less legislation in Indiana and now Michigan. We get the impression that laws in those states had somehow required workers to join unions.

Quite the contrary. Unions are the bargaining agent for the employees, negotiating contracts with employers—binding legal contracts, sacred to conservative think tanks everywhere.

We hear two views about the high-tech workforce.

On one hand, employers warn of a dire labor shortage. On the other, recent high-tech graduates can't find jobs. Many face crushing student loans that they may never pay off. Mid-career high-tech workers are steadily being let go. Discouraged mid-career workers take lower-paid service jobs after months of searching for a job as good as the one they lost.

This is a cross-post from The Huffington Post by Stan Sorscher, labor representative for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace/IFPTE Local 2001 (SPEEA/IFPTE).

The other day, I had lunch with an economist I respect and admire. I asked him, what would it take for China to become a modern democracy and build a strong middle class?

OK. I didn't ask him that. I told him that China would need strong institutions of civil society and a deeper sense of a social contract to become a stable modern democracy with a dynamic middle class.

This is a cross-post from Huffington Post by Stan Sorscher, labor representative for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace/IFPTE Local 2001 (SPEEA/IFPTE).

A CEO, a Tea Party member and public employee sit at a table with 12 cookies on a plate. The CEO grabs 11 cookies and tells the Tea Party member, "You better watch him. He wants your cookie."

The CEO took 11 out of 12 cookies. This isn't a question of what's fair. The CEO has the economic power to take 11 cookies—and he does.

This is a cross-post by Stan Sorscher, labor representative for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace/IFPTE (SPEEA/IFPTE). An editorial in my local paper is a good example of how we trivialize our public discussion of globalization and trade policy. The editorial follows this logic: Trade is good. All trade is good. More trade is better than less trade. Maximum possible trade! Anyone who disagrees is protectionist or resentful.