bravenrace wrote:
Ransom wrote:
How do we get *most* people to care *a little*? That will make a much bigger difference than a few gearheads having an entire household-full of items made in the U.S...
As much as I'd like to think we could, we probably can't. American consumers created this problem in a large way by constantly wanting more for less. There was a time when if you couldn't afford something you didn't buy it, but now people want it all, and don't seem to care as much about the value in high quality products, and that has driven manufacturing overseas. I fear that the only time that will change is when economically we become what China was 20 years ago, and that's the direction we are headed.
Unfortunately, I think you've hit the nail on the head. I may have told this story before, but I recently needed a special adjustable C-clamp for a job I was doing. I looked at the ones at Home Depot and they were $20. Then I went to a small indie tool place near me and they had an American-made example (I forget the manufacturer now, but it was one I recognized as American at the time) and that tool was $50. But, I bought it.
Now, it dawned on me that, say, 50 years ago, in inflation-adjusted dollars, that tool was probably $50. Now, however, we all as consumers have this option of buying things for less than half of what they would have cost us back when everything was American made. And not just adjustable C-clamps- radios, televisions, you name it- not only is all this stuff way more advanced than it used to be, but we're buying a multi-CD-player Hi-def Tv blue ray bluetooth blue-whatever super heterodyne thingamawhatchit for way less than what a record player or B&W TV used to run our grandparents. Adjusted for inflation.
Where does this leave us? Well, a lot higher standard of living, on the face of it, and the "choice" to buy American and get (arguably) better quality or buy Chinese and get...more quantity. Unfortunately, the market is speaking, and it's saying that 9 out of 10 Americans talk big but ultimately how they spend their dollars talks bigger.
This same situation gets played out again when it comes to food- we all say we want organically raised, hormone-free, non GMO food, but how many of us go right down the store and plunk down for the 99 cent a pound hamburger (made from God-knows what cow) versus buying real beef from a farmer at 3 or 4 bucks a pound- which is what real beef really costs. The American Consumer speaks volumes when s/he opens his or her wallet: We want it all, and we want it cheap.
This market distortion hides real inflation, in my mind. American consumers might be spending the same % of their income on food, tools, TVs, or whatnot, but if you were able to somehow control for the fact that those things are all much cheaper now due to importation from China, or mass factory farming, or whatever...I bet you'd see people are a LOT worse off than they used to be.
The one market where this actually really shows up is housing. I did some research a while back, and in 1950 the average household income to average home price ratio was 1:1.6. In 2000 that ratio was 1:3. (This is distorted even more when you realize in 1950 most households had one earner, and in 2000 many had two) The reality is, I think, if we were living in the same sort of society as we were in 1950, where tools were made in America, food was farmed naturally, etc, you'd see the ACTUAL cost of the stuff most Americans buy nowadays is about double what it is today. And we're in way, way worse shape than anyone realizes.
