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The Irony Report (June) – - A Photo Essay
"Made in Nicaragua"
"Made in Haiti"
"Made in China"
"Made in China"
"Made in Nicaragua"
"Made in Pakistan"
Main Street U.S.A.
It’s a free country, so you all can do as you please, but for what it is worth, I think we would be better off if we stopped thinking like “consumers” and started thinking like Americans. So when I shop for patriotic stuff for the Fourth of July, I’ll be checking labels.
Oh, and you can find these Made in USA:
UPDATE: From Notoriously Conservative: How to Tell The Country of Origin of a Product, by the Barcode – Buy USA First
For an explanation of the significance of bar codes as to country of origin, see Snopes – - Country Code.
Tags: consumerism, Fourth of July, irony, patriotism
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We might also think about why manufacturing has shifted out of the U.S. to overseas plants.
It’s far less expensive to hire labor in China, et al, than in the U.S., and labor is often the largest single factor in business costs, therefore in product pricing.
If you want to see the price of T-shirts, hats, etc., increase substantially, just wait until they are produced by union labor in the U.S.
If it’s more cost effective to have items made abroad and shipped here than to produce them here, what does that say about labor costs and product prices in the U.S.?
Most of the items pictured are textiles, which used to be made by non-union labor primarily in North Carolina, South Carolina and south-central Virginia. Where textile mills had been unionized in New England, they were quickly out of business; but as far as I know, the Southern mills were not unionized.
There are factors at play in addition to labor costs, including (1) low fuel costs which enable products to be shipped cheaply from the Orient; (2) the Federal tax structure which penalizes domestic manufacture; and (3) in some cases, environmental costs which overseas factories do not incur. Factor (1) will eventually be remedied by market forces; the alternatives for powering merchant shipping are limited. Factors (2) and (3) could be remedied by Congress tomorrow, if we had a Congress made up of rational human beings not on the campaign-contribution take. But we don’t.
Nonetheless, regardless of the reasons, I have become weary of choosing the lesser of two (or more) evils and hesitant to keep digging the hole. By purchasing cheap goods from overseas, we are digging ourselves in deeper every day. There is always the option to buy nothing – - use what you have or make do without. Most of what we buy these days are not necessities, they are wants; remove the “want,” and you are liberated from the hole-digging brigade.
I also am willing to pay more for fewer products as long as they are made in America. My plates, cups, dishes, glasses, and so on are all American made, much of them by artisans in North Carolina. I could buy the same things made in China for half the price – - but they are inferior goods, don’t last as long, and increase our imbalance of trade payments, so I simply don’t.
Finally, there is the attitude of the overseas producers, particularly the Chinese. When the lead paint on kids’ toys scandal broke, the Chinese trade delegation sent a sharply worded letter to the U.S. stating, in essence, they didn’t care about toxic paint on their products, their only concern was producing goods for the cheapest price, so they opposed any regulation of lead paint. I have a copy of that letter somewhere; it is truly enlightening.