> The rich, who don't need the rest of us, will pay us to leave? In what kind of sense, even if the author is correct on all other counts, would this work? Why pay a thousand people to leave when you can just leave yourself

This doesn't happen directly in a naive way, but indirectly through various pressures and constraints. For example when IBM is offshoring its jobs, it is basically providing an incentive for its workers to just move to another country. It is not a direct bribe but is a presented as an alternative to losing their job.

> Why pay a thousand people to leave when you can just leave yourself?

Again I think this is highly allegorical and we should differentiate between "rich individuals" and "rich corporations". "Rich individuals" already can move freely, they are sort of trans-national. They move from one metropolis to the next without much regard to what country it is located in. But it seems that the article talks more about "the rich" as the "rich corporate entities". These are also becoming transnational, but it is a little harder for them to move. They are not controlled by 1 or 2. Individuals there could be a small upper managerial class on top that would be required to relocate. Those people cannot all pay for a private bodyguard, lots of maids, large walled-off estates, and they cannot all afford private airplanes, they still need the protection and peace offered by America. So instead they just outsource their labor requirements to other countries.

> But heck, that was true 100 years ago.

That's true, but it wasn't as true 40 or 50 years ago. A middle class American family had a higher real wage income. Factories were still open, and both American consumer market and labor market looked pretty good. Yes, in effect we are reverting back to older times. As the article points out, there might soon be just the super-rich and armies of hired illegal immigrant labor serving them.

> Emigration might be a wise choice not for the poor and unwashed, but for most people ...

Exactly. The problem with the globalization (and its proponents that hail it as simple and obvious market liberalization) is that only large corporate entities and rich individuals can engage in it. The other 99.99% cannot simply pack up and leave.

This has been exacerbated by large amounts of debts that Americans have been accumulating in the last 10-20 years. These are student loans, mortgages, health related expenses and also plain old credit-card dept. What this means is that a lot workers are effectively slaves to whomever they owe the money. If they lose their job they could lose their house, might not be able to treat their illnessm, and feed their children.

Those are the just indirect contraints. Add to that the existence of national borders. The immigration procedures in some countries are highly restrictive for an "average Joe". For example, there is simply no way for a regular person to just get on a plane and choose to move to America. It is either a work visa, a marriage visa, a rich investor visa and so on.

Then of course, comes the politics. And there nobody in power really discusses any alternatives or ways out. The parties might as well just form a single party and stop pretending there is any form of debate or disagreement. They are effectively discussing what color the bicycle should be painted, instead of maybe discussing if we need a truck or an airplane instead of a bicycle.