http://www.usatoday.com/money/...prise-you/50127452/1

Not much surprises me these days and I'm sure not buying it 100%, but this is an interesting take on foreign outsourcing and products. I think I'm right up there in my loyalty to American made, but the world is far more complex than most of us can comprehend.

There is a theory that 'those that make it the best, should make it all'. 'Best' doesn't just mean quality. Price is one ingredient. Quality of service, dependability of delivery, are others. Using this you can track who makes various commodities. Textiles as example, went from England, to the the northeast United States, to the southeast United States, to various overseas countries, i.e., China, Vietnam, Pakistan, etc. It's just the natural flow of things. A society that loses the production of something has to replace it with something else that that society can do better than anyone else. There are a bunch of things that the U.S. can do better than anyone else, and that includes non-manufacturing activities like marketing, If the government stays out of the way of letting markets operate freely, and instead, provide business with incentives to retrain people in new areas, we would be much better off. Besides, there are always some activities that require manual labor, such as building houses and roads and bridges. But even these require more sophistication that they used to.
Humbo

quote:

A society that loses the production of something has to replace it with something else that that society can do better than anyone else. There are a bunch of things that the U.S. can do better than anyone else, and that includes non-manufacturing activities like marketing, If the government stays out of the way of letting markets operate freely, and instead, provide business with incentives to retrain people in new areas, we would be much better off. Besides, there are always some activities that require manual labor, such as building houses and roads and bridges. But even these require more sophistication that they used to.

Well said! I agree with you on this front for sure. The question is always, what is the next great thing? I'm pretty sure it won't be RVs!!!

The area I feel a little different on is Gov't intervention. I do think we must rely on the Feds to create an even playing field. Being in the military products arena I have seen this played both ways, but generally the Gov't doesn't step in unless there is a National Security issue (like continuous supply worries) or there is "dumping" clearly going on. The only time I've seen it less fairly applied is with the reenactment of the Barry Amendment that requires all cloth items that touches a warfighter to be US made only. This all came about due to Chinese berets being bought for our SOF guys at a time when China was still seen as "Red". The Barry Amendment ads tons of cost and trouble for manufacturers and cost taxpayers Mega Millions. The part that really bugs me is that we could use the savings to pay our service-people better so they aren't forced to buy all their items at Walmart!!!