On February 13, 2016 at 10:01, Bubby said...
|If we want all the jobs back that go between digger and store clerk we need to penalize Anti-American companies that don't want to fully participate in the American way of life. If they want to build in China
I agree 100%. But here is the problem. Everyone likes their $99 Blu-Ray player and if they have a job, then they don't care where it is made. It used to be a few companies would make similar products in the US and they cost a little more for those will to pay for Made in the USA. Now it seems you can't even find those.
A very good friend of mine from college is one of the 1400 Carrier employees whose job is being moved to Mexico. As such, I will never buy another Carrier product and another mutual friend is going to no longer spec Carrier for the commercial buildings his company designs. The average consumer is going to have to take a stand and pay attention to something real instead of being offended because the barista at Starbucks used 2% instead of skim.
I applaud your stand and believe it would make a difference if all followed your lead. But there is the rub, if you are accustomed to $99 blu-ray players, you will not be happy with the same plastic junk for $199 and feel like your government just gave you the shaft. And while you are at it, you will assume they lined their pockets at the same time. This is a no win situation.
A friend of mine, about 10 years ago declared he would not buy Chinese products because they had such a poor record of workplace and human rights violations. I applauded him for his stand but doubted whether it would make a difference. Back then, it was his computer monitor he was prepared to replace with a non-Chinese product. 10 years later, if he wanted to outfit his home and office with non-Chinese products, he would have to live without some stuff altogether.
Like it or not, we have a global economy and business is about producing products and selling them as competitively as possible. When I was a kid, the first products were dribbling in from Japan. It was junk. If it said "Made in Japan" on the back, you knew you just bought a pile of junk. Fast forward to 30 years later and they had the best cars, best electronics, etc. Japanese labor was cheap, and that was the fuel that ran manufacturing efficiently. The Japanese workers then saw what the developed world was like and wanted their share. Their wages went up, they became less competitive. Computer monitors and cars started coming out of Korea because the workers there worked for nothing. The pattern repeated itself. We saw our favorite brand Integra go from making all their electronics in Japan, to Japan for the high end and Malaysia for the entry level. More and more shifted to Malaysia. Then China came online... the pattern will forever repeat itself. Next in line after China? Who knows.
Return production to the US? Go from $5 a day in an underdeveloped country to fifteen bucks an hour in Stanleyland? Surely you are joking, or live in la la land. Never on a large scale. Rarely on a cost effective basis. A few select companies can do it, but only with specialized products.
