Are you concerned about the safety of goods from communist China? The tainted pet food, the lead in children's toys, the melamine in dairy products. It's enough to scare any sensible consumer.

Ferreting out a suspect product after it's been put in a container and shipped to our ports is like looking for a needle in a haystack. That's why the United States has struck a deal to have U.S. inspection offices on Chinese soil. The goal is for U.S. employees to monitor goods in communist China before they leave the factory. The communist party agreed because they want to make sure Western consumers don't lose confidence in their products.

Clark often takes calls from people who feel that we should just put barriers on trade with foreign nations. There's a tendency to want to call a "timeout," but our global economy doesn't work like that. Free trade is ultimately responsible for making our society and others much wealthier.

Of course, if you lost a job at a factory because of outsourcing, Clark knows his words ring hollow and may seem callous.

But the reality of economics is that jobs continually shift. We have to be lifelong learners who can adapt our skills to a new climate. Clark thinks about the way his show has changed and adapted to new technologies over the years. If he never changed, he would be an extinct dinosaur.

Creative destruction dictates that long-term growth requires old industries to fall by the wayside so new ones can spring up. Think about all the people who trained in Morse code to be telegraph operators. Then the telephone came along and made telegraphs obsolete.

The bottom-line is that we have to continually adapt. You have to seek the skills that will allow you to create a paycheck as jobs disappear and new ones are created.