AUBURN – Running a business or keeping a job in Maine – amid the pressures of a global marketplace – are getting tougher than ever.

Workers from abroad, fighting only to get food on the table, are competing with an American work force that has abandoned science and math while it is paid exponentially more money.

Yet, there’s reason for hope, a panel of experts said Thursday in Auburn.

In the first of a series of talks about economist Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat,” four people gave their thoughts on the best-seller and its inherent warning that the United States is losing at least a share of its dominance in the world market.

The panel included Janine Bisaillon-Cary of the Maine International Trade Center, Craig Gunderson of Oxford Networks, Richard Pattenaude, president of the University of Southern Maine, and Matt Schlobom from the Maine Free Trade Campaign.

All four said the same technology that’s taking jobs away to India and China can bring other jobs here to Maine. Young people and entrepreneurs are becoming better at connecting abroad. And schools are getting ready.

“The myth is that a university changes at the speed of a runaway glacier,” said Pattenaude.

Not so, he said.

He offers podcasts of his lectures. Some teachers in Portland and Gorham connect via the Internet to students across the United States and Europe, he said.

“Our students are more aware of the world than they have ever been before,” Pattenaude said.

That’s only part of the answer, though. And the dangers of a global market – on Maine workers and workers abroad – are frightening.

Activist Schlobom said he agrees with much of Friedman’s description – of a world marketplace made flat by greater technology and communication.

“But, a lot of people are getting squished,” he said.

The new marketplace has done little to force counties to improve the state of labor, preventing children from working or offering health care and pensions.

Gunderson said he worries that his own children may not take the warning in Friedman’s book seriously enough.

“We’ve been very wealthy, very successful and perhaps a little spoiled,” he said.

But it’s only one book, unable to address all the effects and subtleties of global change, Pattenaude said.

But it asks many of the right questions, he said.

Friedman, a regular columnist with the New York Times, travels across the world, using interviews and anecdotes to make sense of the revolutionary changes.

The book and the panel discussion are part of the ongoing LA Reads campaign, promoted by both cities’ public libraries.

The final LA Reads event will take place at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 25 at the Lewiston Public Library. Chip Morrison will lead a brainstorming and planning session to discuss steps that can be taken locally to better prepare Lewiston and Auburn for global changes.