In article , "Ed Pawlowski" wrote:

"Doug Miller" wrote in message

But better? You've got to be kidding. We used to make appliances and tools
here that would last a generation. Now we import cheap crap from China
that
falls apart in eighteen months and winds up in a landfill. How is that an
improvement?

There is a flaw in your argument. We started making cheap crap here too.

Yeah, but it wasn't *all* cheap crap.

Black & Decker was one of the leaders in the rush to consumer grade junk.
Lasko Metal Products fought the cheap stuff by making their own version of
cheap fans back in the mid 1970's. I have a couple of made in the USA drill
from B&D that are not as good as many imports.

They're probably better than many imports, too -- I take it you haven't been
inside a Harbor Freight store (aka Horrible Fright)? Talk about cheap crap...

And of course many imports are very high quality. I don't object to imports in
general, I just object to imports that are cheap crap. I've never observed
quality problems in any of the tools or other products that I've bought that
were made in Canada, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, New
Zealand, or Israel, and only minimal problems in items coming from Mexico,
Taiwan or Korea. China, on the other hand....

I'm old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" meant "crap", just like "Made
in China" does now. Hopefully, China will make a similar improvement
eventually.

I buy old American-made tools at auctions and garage sales whenever I have the
opportunity. Some of that stuff lasts forever.


GE sold the small appliance
division to B&D also and they kept making stuff cheaper. Why? Because we
wanted cheaper from the discount stores at the time.
[...]
Consumers demand cheap stuff too. We are as much to blame as the stores
selling it.

Only too true. In the words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."