You know everyone thinks that is what the gov't regulations do and perhaps 50/75 years ago it was, but today the regulations that congress puts out are influenced by so many lobbies that what comes out is not what was intended.koolaid wrote:
For all the complaining about unions and environmental regulations, I don't see a lot of people chomping at the bit to send their children off to work in dangerous mines and factories every morning, or putting down their bottled water or showers in order to drink and bathe in untreated industrial runoff.
And on the other side of the coin, for all the complaining about wealth distribution and corporate greed, we have come a long way from the era of the robber baron and Pinkerton goon squads bashing in the heads of workers who don't toe the company line, forced migration to company towns and the indentured servitude of the company store.
Our economy and society has moved on from that, and it has for the most part been beneficial. China today is the Japan of the 70's and 80's. There are already other nations further behind on the industrial path that are starting to become the low cost alternative to China, while China and India begin to creep into the information age. It is the natural progression of things.
So sure, buy American when you can, but stop romanticizing the 19th century. We aren't going back to it.
Example: 5 years ago there was a problem with toys coming in from China with lead--BIG problem. Who was doing the importing of those toy--large companies who had their products made with very questionable plastics made in the cheapest manner possible. Scary stuff right--Congress passed a law that required testing of children's toys--sounds good right--until you think about the millions of stay at home moms and dad's that made cloth toys/wooden toys as their small business whose toys never ever contained lead anyway. Mattel, Playschool, and the large coorporations had lobbies that could afford to have the law drawn up to cause them the least problems possible, while thousands of home businesses were put out because the regulations were contradictory hard to understand and seemed to place burdens on them to have each batch of their raw material (yarn, cloth, wood) undergo expensive testing. Some took the chance and waded through the waters, but many many simply looked at the regulations and the possible fines and decided that it was not worth the risk. You could argue that is free markets--but it was not--many had superior products at amazing prices but did not have enough capital to hire lawyers to wade through the mire. Instead of only dealing with the problem at hand--shoddy work in china being sold to children--what passed was sweeping legislation that was onerous and destructive to American business and squashed out competition between small businesses. How do I know all this--I was a small (fledgling) sling maker, and I after looking at the risk to my family of this legislation and the cost of legal fees to continue business said no thanks. Now I only make slings for very close friends and often with the fabric they buy and bring to me. Not someone else making a better sling, but a gov't regulation that was not meant to address my business but did anyway because of how the law was worded put me out of business.
) is not worth what you paid for it these days.