Boston ? The United States needs to better educate its workers and avoid the trappings of protectionism to fully flourish in a global economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Friday.

While trade barriers might slow the frenetic, sometimes troubling pace of competition, “our standard of living would soon begin to stagnate and perhaps even decline as a consequence,” Greenspan said at a finance conference at Boston College.

“Time and again throughout our history, we have discovered that attempting merely to preserve the comfortable features of the present, rather than reaching for new levels of prosperity, is a sure path to stagnation,” he said.

Greenspan spoke at a conference where the outsourcing of jobs was a prominent topic. Many U.S. companies are sending manufacturing and service jobs overseas to save money.

Greenspan noted that while wages for high-skill workers have risen, real wages for low-skill workers have been stagnant for 20 years, suggesting the country is producing a shortage of high-skill workers and a surplus of low-skill ones.

“Some have a gnawing sense that our problems may be more than temporary and that the roots of the problem may extend back through our education system,” Greenspan said.

Greenspan said the current anxiety about losing jobs to foreign competition was understandable.

“There is palpable unease that businesses and jobs are being drained from the United States,” he said.

But the U.S. economy cannot have it both ways, he said, sheltering itself from the “creative destruction” of the global economy while enjoying the lower prices and higher quality goods that come when countries exercise their comparative advantages in skills and labor costs.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan smiles during ceremonies that presented him with an honorary doctorate of law degree at the Boston College Finance Conference. He received the degree Friday on the school's campus.