Quote:
Originally Posted by pl001
US consumers will actually pay more for products made in the US. Just a couple months ago I was pleasantly surprised to see many US-made options when shopping for carseats. I didn't see that a couple years ago. And companies like Edelbrock and Weathertech proudly advertise the fact they still manufacture in the US and are able to charge a premium because of it. I expect a big campaign when Motorola starts selling the US-assembled X-Phone.
And if you can't see what's wrong with taking jobs that used to be able to support a family and shipping them overseas to factories paying slave labor rates in countries with long records of human rights abuses, well, that should have been obvious.
What frustrates me the most is how difficult it has become to even find quality products anymore. Everything is turning into disposable junk. Often, very expensive disposable junk.
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What I can't see is how driving the company in the ground within a few years is better than at least saving local jobs in R&D, accounting, administration, etc? In a vast majority of cases keeping US manufacturing jobs is really not an option simply because companies don't have the pricing power and buyers are not willing to pay more for it. Some admirable campaigns notwithstanding, they have yet to yield any results on any larger scale and may only work in some specific cases. For the vast majority of companies the options are relocating/outsourcing production or dying.
And you are forgetting that the US$ 500.- and up you pay for an assembly line worker in China for 40 hours perweek is a very good wage there. And please skip that "slave labor" nonsense. Those days are long gone. Of course, work in production is no picnic -- that is why they get paid very well by local standards.
The US shouldn't be competing for these kinds of jobs, anyway. You need higher end jobs to make a living wage in America. Trying to keep half-dead, uncompetitive factories alive is not the way.