While I appreciate your right to your opinion, I'm wondering what your
solution is. Would you rather raise the price of products to the point you
can no longer afford them, or would you rather lower your wage so you can
make things at a competitive price? Personally, I don't see many people in
the US (or Canada, for that matter) clamouring for the $0.50/hour jobs
manufacturing goods like you're describing. Up here in this part of Canada,
it's hard to find someone to work in a fast-food store for $10/hour...
Anyway, none of that is probably relevent. But what the heck... Now that I
think about it, I'm really curious about how much of say, a $500 mitre saw,
goes to labour vs. material vs. profit (for all the different levels) etc.
As far as your question regarding supporting the Chinese military, I'd say
that it would be obvious that any money that goes overseas is supporting
foreign military (as well as social) programs in the destination countries,
and probably any trade partners of those countries. At least, for any
country that taxes business and people. And if you look at the trade
partners of that country as well, it doesn't take too many degrees of
separation before you're supporting things you'd rather not support, like
terrorism.
Of course, unless you can guarantee that any money you spend stays entirely
within your country, you end up supporting all these nasty things anyway.
For example, lets say someone starts up a manufacturing shop in your town
that churns out hand planes. They employ entirely local labour, so you feel
happy buying from them. Of course, the people they pay can only afford to
shop at WalMart (since they're competing, wage wise, with sweatshops in more
undesireable countries). So these people end up shelling out their
paychecks to these other countries anyway. All you've done is introduce one
more level of middleman between you and the undesireables.
Well, that's my lunchtime logic ramble for today!
--
Clint
"evodawg" wrote in message
news
Bilf.5062$H84.2414@trnddc04...
After spending sometime shopping this weekend, (which I hate) I'm finding
out that nothing is made in the USA anymore. Most is made in China. With
all this money going overseas to china, is there a chance we could be
supporting the Chinease Military? Scary thought.
Also, spent some time checking out Rockler's Pre Christmas sale, I noticed
most of what I was interested in was made in China. It also occurred to me
that other woodworking retailers offer the same products but under their
name. Is most of this stuff manufactured in China and their name stamped
on
it? So you're really getting the samething only with different names?
Does Lee Valley or others as an example sell more made in the USA products
than say Rockler? And does anyone know of a list, broken down by category
of made in the USA products? Example: Tools, Furniture, Building products
etc.
Just a little concerned about all this $$$$ going to China and our
politicians and retail manufactures promoting this idea. Is National
Security an issue? Not to mention all the jobs lost to this practice.
Rich
--
"you can lead them to LINUX
but you can't make them THINK"