ben carter wrote:
I recently was shopping around to have a product of mine manufactured.
Reality check:

To have it made in China with semi-skilled labor was $1.60 per hour.

The exact same job here was $21.00 per hour. You do the 2nd grade math...

The point was made to me if I like being able to afford the things I own
then they have to be made elsewhere. Period. No US manufacturer can
touch that. Most everything you own was made this way. Tough luck if
it's substandard.

First of all, I suspect this is a troll. *Everyone*
knows that virtually all of our small consumer goods
have been made in 3rd world countries for at least the
last 20 years. Now most of the large durable goods
and a fair amount of the parts that go into our cars
are being made there. It's a done deal and there
is no use whining about it.

Try building a VCR for $50. Try building a VCR for
$1000. The only company in the US that even tried
was Cartravision, but that's another story.

So there should be no surprise that your part would
cost 1/10 to make in China. What you left out is that
if you make it in China, you'll have a ton of issues to
deal with such as tooling, quality, shipping, customs
documents, design theft, minmum quantities, letters of
credit, etc, etc. So if you're doing 100 pieces, that
$21.00/hr starts to look pretty cheap. And if you're doing
100k pieces, you wouldn't be posting on this newsgroup.

If you're going to build something to sell, don't waste
your time on a mass market. It's not worth it. Build
something that will save a few people time and money.
Or build something so well that people will happily pay
a premium for it.

There's still plenty of opportunity for manufacturing
things in the US. But it's all in specialty work, not
commodity.