On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 20:29:56 +0000 (UTC), Henry E Schaffer wrote:

In article ,
Bay Area Dave wrote:
I'd rather have a good tool that worry about somebody's job. ...

This seems to translate to, "I've got mine."

You can vote with your dollars, but I'll vote for the specific tool for
the task, regardless of what country it was made in. ...

It should be possible to have both - if people cared to buy high
quality tools made in the USA, then they would be available. I'll pay
more, and understand that some of that will come back to me.

The US has to forget "pile 'em high / sell 'em cheap" as a basis for
it's economy. With the demands in living standards that Americans
expect, you will be beaten into a bloody pulp by the developing
world if the US continues to try and pursue it.

You have to get into niche markets.

For instance in the UK we used to have large British owned car
manufacturers producing 100,000s of crappy cars every year. Now we
have a thriving industry supplying racing cars and engines for Indy,
F1 etc. All the large scale car manufacturing is Japanese.

The US has to get over the fact that it is going to lose it's
large-scale manufacturing base. Fixing the figures by driving your
economy through defense spending isn't going to work for
ever.....people will eventually get ****ed off at being in a constant
state of war/state of fear and wont wear it. There are reports here
that more Americans are beginning to think that the war in Iraq was
not a very good idea and it can only be a matter of time before they
start questioning harder the given motives for it.

Imposing tarrifs on foreign imports can also only be a stop-gap
measure, so expect a farming crisis in your country in the not too
distant future.

The US economy growing at 7% a year, the Japanese and most European
economies pretty much stagnant? That's an imbalance that doesn't make
sense and can't go on forever whatever St. Alan Greenspan thinks.

To get back OT. Lie Nielsen is showing the way: small scale and value
added. Veritas also - very good customer service if the comments on
this group are anything to go by and good kit aswell.

--

Frank


The machine stops - EM Forster