Turbine,
I have to agree with your thoughtful comments, though up to a point. The way I read the situation as it exists today is our country seems to be biased against manufacturing and natural resource self-sufficiency.
When looking at the component parts that comprise our product, I can say only the printed circuit boards, the aluminum covers and mounting plate are certainly made in the USA. There are perhaps a half-dozen others that probably are made here but I'm not certain. The vast balance are not and cannot be purchased from domestic suppliers simply because there aren't any.
An undeniable fact is labor is expensive. I'm not just talking about salary, it's also the paperwork due to government regulations, workman's compensation, minimum wage restrictions, liability insurance; the list goes on and on.
I cannot hire a highschool kid interested electronics to apprentice for the summer. He is not worth $25 (actual costs after everything is factored in) an hour because he has no experience to be useful even though he could learn since he is interested and eager.
He is worth $5 an hour and he would be happy with that. I can't pay him what he is worth so he sits at home watching MTV. In an other age he would been launched on a useful, lifetime career. Now he is an expert on idleness and contemporary "culture".
I have a choice to automate my production or hire people. I automate because machines don't have to be paid minimum wages, I don't have to pay their workman's compensation, they don't need medical insurance, W2 forms, and don't sue me for racial and sexual discrimenation. In an other age I would have done differently.
As Pogo said a long time ago, "We have met the enemy and it is us." We are a society where our priest-class is lawyers.
They write all our laws and regulations, they are intermediaries that insure all disagreements between people are contentious, they make themselves indispensible through fear and suspicion of consequences if their services are not used. They eat, they s**t but they produce nothing in return. Individually they may seem nice enough but there is just to damn many of them and they all can bite.
Like true parasites, they are not content to live off of the host, instead they insist on damaging it with the detirus and toxin of their "work". They excrete the corrossive acid and sand into the gears of working America that is grinding this fine machinery to a halt.
Don't blame companies that export their labor overseas. The lawyers write the laws that make the rules we all play by. Like any game, you play the cards how they are dealt and you follow the rules of the game. Instead look at who makes the rules, not the ones that play by them. Like the Wizard of Oz, they are adept at diverting your attention from "the man behind the curtain".
Mariss  |