Chinese made stuff used to be made here

[Bright_Star]

All the stuff you see in places like Wal-Mart that has the tag that says "Made in China" used to be made here in the U.S.A. a long time ago. Back then it was so rare to hear about a product recall that it was practically unheard of. WHY? Because American factory workers took pride in their work. "American Made" used to mean it was a quality product that youy didn't think twice about buying.
Now you see "Made in China" crap all over the place & recalls are commonplace. That's because China doesn't give 2 shits about who's buying their products. as long as they make a profit then they don't give a rat's ass.
Nowadays if you do see a "Made in America" product then it's more than likely to be high priced. Consumers see a "Made in China" shirt for $5.00 & then see a "Made in America" shirt for $30.00 guess which one they'll be buying? Sad but true.
We need to manufacture our own stuff so we can one day tell China to hit the road.

[TNT]

The same used to be said of "Made in Japan." And then "Made in Korea." And so on and so fourth. But I have to admit I'm concerned about the stuff coming from China. Some of it is downright dangerous.

However, we will be unlikely to ever see more "Made in America" stuff. There's an economic law called "Comparative Advantage" proposed by David Riccardo. The great economist Paul Samuelson once called it the one non-trivial law in all the social sciences.

I won't go into the details, but I recently had a very long debate on it on a local bulletin board. I took the anti point and mostly lost (although in certain circumstances, primarily call centers, I did have a few of my points bolstered oddly enough by a paper from Samuelson himself).

If you want more (and as much as I hate getting my information from wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

It would be nice, but unfortunately I don't see it happening. Much cheaper to pay somebody in a third world country pennies a day to produce a good than to pay minimum wage at least to an American worker. And people seem to basing a lot of their purchasing decisions on price.

This might be better discussed on Fratching.

[Acolyte]

Nowadays if you do see a "Made in America" product then it's more than likely to be high priced. Consumers see a "Made in China" shirt for $5.00 & then see a "Made in America" shirt for $30.00 guess which one they'll be buying? Sad but true.

Do you want to pay $30 for a t-shirt, $40,000 for a small car, $6000 for a basic desktop and so on? No, because you can't afford it. Two, if every 'outsourced' manufacturing job came back to North America, we'd have a worker shortage of epic proportions.

You can have your current standard of living and Chinese-made goods, or you can be completely broke but with a shirt made by an American instead of a Chinese person-and nothing else. A lot of people don't understand how integral overseas manufacturing is to the current North American standard of living.

[Rapscallion]

Fratching material - closing this one.

Rapscallion