Over the past decade, Taiwan - one of the Four Asian Tigers - has seen its economy continue to expand, but real wages have gone the other direction. The plastics processing industry is among those that have suffered double-digit decline of inflation-adjusted wages.

Taiwan's real GDP grew 17.5 percent in the past 10 years, after deducting inflation from the 29.4 percent nominal rate, according to government stats quoted by a recent report in the Taiwanese publication Business Weekly.

However, real wages shrank 4.3 percent during the same time period.

The plastics processing, machinery/equipment, and auto and auto parts manufacturing industries have seen double-digit deceases of real wages.

The Business Weekly article, "Who stole my hard-earned money?", listed a number of reasons to blame, the top being globalization, especially outsourcing to the Chinese mainland and other lower-cost regions.

Even more thought-provoking are Taiwanese readers' comments.

Reader "KK" wrote: "...Taiwan corporations constantly focus on cost reduction measures such as outsourcing and offshore manufacturing... They only want to make more money and give no thoughts to the support they received from the people and the society in Taiwan when their businesses first started. There are no national boundaries for greedy businesspeople." [Translation]

Reader "Jeff" disagreed: "Don't blame businesspeople. The global market has no national boundaries indeed. Businesses only need to abide by the laws and pay taxes. ... The big problem is what we have the government for. If the government offers no solution but to blame the macro environment, the individuals just have to do as they see fit." [Translation]

All these sound a little Déjà vu to me. Don't we have the same dilemma here in the U.S.?