My eye has been caught recently by the contrast between two stories the FT has been covering. Burberry, the luxury goods manufacturer, is to close a factory near Treorchy, South Wales, and expand production in Spain and China where rents and salaries are lower. This decision has drawn condemnation from everyone from the local MP to Charlotte Church. In other news, Glasgow has been persuading companies such as JP Morgan to move jobs away from London. Two of Glasgow’s attractions are said to be, well, lower rents and lower salaries.

One of these stories is widely regarded as good news, and the other as a disaster. But the motives of Burberry and JPMorgan seem very similar: they are profitable businesses, aiming to stay profitable. The effects look similar too. Some people in the poorer of the areas (China is poorer than Wales, Glasgow is poorer than London) will get better jobs. Some people in the richer areas will lose theirs. Prices will adjust too: the richer areas will become just a tiny bit more affordable. When the new jobs go to Glaswegians, all this appears to be acceptable, but when the new jobs go to foreigners it is regarded as appalling.

The queue of celebrities eager to hitch themselves to the Burberry backlash seem to have entirely missed the xenophobia inherent in their views, but that is the risk of allowing the debate on globalisation to be carried out by Charlotte Church and Sir Tom Jones. Yet more sensible observers also seem a little confused. Several people have complained that when jobs move from Britain to lower-wage countries, this just goes to show the need for stronger global regulations, even a global government to protect exploited workers in both Wales and in China.

But a lack of appropriate regulations doesn’t seem to be the problem in this case. After all, since Glasgow and London are both part of the UK, the government could indeed regulate the exodus of financial firms to Scotland. It could rule that all workers in JP Morgan’s Glasgow offices be paid London salaries and that Glasgow landlords must raise their rents to London levels.

Yet the government has not acted, and were it deranged enough to try, the result would be predictably catastrophic for Glasgow. At the moment, what Glasgow offers to employers over London is value for money. It would be nice if Glaswegians earned London wages, and perhaps they will if the Clyde continues to boom. But that will not happen by imposing a minimum wage in Glasgow of ₤100 an hour. It is hard to see how a project to legislate China into prosperity would work much better.

It turns out that jobs are created and destroyed all the time - several thousand a day in the UK alone. The jobs that visibly move to foreign parts get all the attention, but jobs can also be lost to other parts of the same country. Industries can fall out of fashion; what now for hula hoops in a PlayStation world? Jobs can be wiped out by technological change; there is not much call for typists these days.

It is not particularly helpful to distinguish between jobs lost to Glasgow, China or Microsoft Word, especially not to the people who have lost them. The typists, the City analysts and the Welsh textile workers have all fallen victim to economic change. The real difference - and it is very real indeed - between the workers of Treorchy and those of the Square Mile is that London is well-equipped to cope with economic change and Treorchy is not. Neither Burberry nor Sir Tom can do much about that, but there is a reason why more people today live in big cities than ever before.