If you think your boss is putting too much pressure on you to be more productive at the office, just pick up a copy of the book Three Billion New Capitalists, and you might feel differently about stress at work.

Indeed, in his latest book, Clyde Prestowitz says that in today’s economy where three billion new workers – mostly from India and China – have joined the global workforce, those who can do things no one else can do will prosper, but those without special skills will face long hours and low pay.

“No industry will be safe from competition. Services, research and development, and basic research, in which the West now leads the world, could all follow manufacturing to Asia,” writes the founder and current President of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington, D.C.

India and China are riding the crest of what Prestowitz calls “the third wave of globalization.” The key elements of this new wave are the negation of time and distance and the rapid transfer of technology from advanced to developing countries.

The book, which Prestowitz subtitled “The great shift of wealth and power to the East,” is a highly engaging and strategic overview of the massive changes that will affect every working person on the planet.

“It has long been assumed that as manufacturing jobs disappeared, the service industries would provide secure, high-paying jobs to compensate for the loss of manufacturing. That view, however, is pre-Internet and pre-third wave. It may not be sustainable in the world of 3 billion new capitalists all online.”

The book is neatly divided into 12 chapters, the four most critical chapters, as far as ordinary working people are concerned, are Icebergs Ahead, How the Capitalist Road Turned East, Made in China, and Serviced in India.

So who are these three billion new capitalists?

According to Prestowitz, 1.3 billion are coming from China, another billion from India and another 700,000 from Russia, the countries of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Bloc. All of them, says the author, have abandoned communism or socialism and moved on to the capitalist road.

Prestowitz doesn’t explicitly say so, but his thesis suggests that we are living in a sort of global Darwinian economy, where only the fittest will survive and thrive.

Indeed, not only are jobs being offshored, but three billion new workers – all smart and hungry for success – are coming to town to compete for work, thanks to the Internet and the global air delivery services of companies like FedEx.

Prestowitz says that time and distance have been eliminated for any type of work that can be done digitally or electronically, such as software development or call center services. In short, the three billion new players are here, possibly to stay.

Reuters' CEO Tom Glocer goes even further: “The amazing thing – and this is the dirty little secret about outsourcing that people need to talk about publicly a bit more – not only is the cost reduction amazing at four, five, and even six to one, but the quality and productivity are better too.”

How did it all start? Prestowitz describes in two chapters aptly titled “Made in China” and “Serviced in India”, the exciting tale of how the two nations rose to become major economic powers.

He says the transformation of China began slowly and cautiously, but eventually resulted in $200 billion in foreign direct investment by the end of the century. In 2003 China passed the United States as the number one recipient of foreign direct investment, $53 billion to $40 billion.

Of all the dazzling statistics China has posted, the most impressive is that in 20 years it has lifted some 400 million of its 1.3 billion people out of grinding $1-a-day poverty.

Citing cheap labour as the main reason why companies like Nike and Motorola moved into China in the 1980s, he writes that “Chinese labor is well disciplined and largely literate with the ability to learn skills quickly. A significant portion of the Chinese factory workforce is as skilled as United States production line workers. But while Americans earn $15-$30 per hour, in China they are paid $0.25-$1.00 per hour.”

Prestowitz notes there are still 800 million poor people in the countryside just aching for a shot at a factory job in the city.

He ends the chapter by hinting that perhaps the solution to the loss of manufacturing lies in services. Then the next chapter, titled Serviced in India, starts with a quote that apparently reveals India’s overall strategy: “India is beginning to do in services what China has been doing in manufacturing.” (Azim Premji, Wipro chairman).

“India's service-providing capabilities are both world-class and extraordinarily broad, encompassing not only information technology but also biotech, a range of medical treatments that have given rise to medical tourism, combinations of technology, finance, and more,” writes Prestowitz.

In engineering and science India now produces about 250,000 graduates, rising to 500,000 annually, who earn a starting salary of $5,000-$6,000 a year. These figures compare to 400,000 science and engineering graduates annually in the United States and to $50,000 and up starting salaries.

Whereas a programmer's salary in the United States is typically around $80,000, in India it is about $11,000.

“This combination of skills, low cost, quality work, and instant communication means that few aspects of your life will remain untouched by the outsourcing of services to India,” says Prestowitz.

“You may not be aware of it, but whether it is your yellow pages, the interactive websites of companies like Boeing or Morgan Stanley, or the report on the X rays you had yesterday, the skilled hands and brains of Indians are present.”

Prestowitz reports that in 2000 Indian software exports were about $6 billion. By the end of 2004, they were estimated to have hit $16 billion. Deloitte forecast last year that within five years, the world's largest financial firms will have shifted $356 billion and 2 million jobs offshore, mostly to India.

Numbers don’t lie: India is fast becoming the newest Asian tiger and is on its path to riches.

According to Prestowitz, every working person is now in competition with his counterpart in another country. A software developer in North America is in competition with software developers in India. Call-center people in New York are in competition with call-center people in India. “It is a whole new world of international competition that we haven't ever seen before.” It’s almost as if work had now become a sport, but not just any sport: an Olympic sport. An Olympic economy, where the best from any one country will compete against the best in every other country.

Yet the sad fact is, most people are struggling just to survive information overload and to keep their job from being eliminated or outsourced. And it’s getting worse. Prestowitz explains the loss of workers’ bargaining power: “Some jobs are outsourced. That creates the threat of outsourcing, which means that the next time you come around for a salary review and a salary increase, you know that it's possible that your job could be outsourced, and therefore your demand for a raise might be mooted.”

On a more hopeful note, Prestowitz insists that “we have got to be doing things that others can't do. We've got to be doing things much better, much more productively than other people do them.”

Ultimately, Prestowitz’s book serves as a much needed warning, a wake-up call to face the new realities of a truly globalized economy.

Given this new competitive landscape, the next time your boss asks if you can produce more with less, he might actually be giving you an opportunity to save your job from going to Asia.