Commentary By Ron Beasley
We constantly hear that the export of US manufacturing is a good thing because we get bargains. The cost of course is the loss of good paying manufacturing jobs which has contributed to the destruction of the middle class. But are we consumers really getting a bargain? I have purchased shirts from the same manufacturer for years. They used to be made in the US but no more. I am not paying less for the shirts but I am getting a year or two where I used to get three to four. No bargain for me here but the company that sells the shirts sees additional profit for each shirt in addition to more sales because of an inferior product. Three years ago I replaced a faucet in the kitchen that had been in place for 20 years. I purchased a new faucet - same model from the same manufacturer. But was it really the same? The answer is no. The manufacturer had been purchased by a large multinational corporation and the new faucet was made in China not the US. The new faucet failed after three years. The faucet I purchased to replace it was also made in China. It was an out of box failure which of course I only discovered after spending an hour under the kitchen sink.
Thomas Friedman's flat earth free trade is only free for multinational corporations. Down here on main street we pay about the same amount for products of inferior quality while the monopolistic multinationals make a lot more money.
Neither the Democrats or Republicans will do anything that will repair the US economy because members of both parties are taking their orders from Wall Street and the World Trade Organization. Welcome to 21st century feudalism.
Ron, I've finally figured out that if I want to buy a product (washing machine, refrigerator, carbon-steel knife, whatever) that's well-made and will last for decades, I'll have to find one that's at least 20-30 years old at a garage/estate/moving sale, or at a used appliance store.
ReplyDeleteTwelve years ago I bought a Bunn coffee maker that made the best damned coffee I'd ever tasted. Two years ago it finally croaked, which I figured was a pretty good life for 3 pots a day. Happy with my last, I replaced it with a new Bunn. The new one makes the worst coffee I've ever tasted -- and has an ungainly Mr. Coffee-style pot with a plastic lid that flaps around all over the place. To hell with them. When this one croaks - probably in a year or two, instead of eight more years like the old one - I'm going back to boiling my coffee in a pan on the stove.
I don't necessarily buy into the idea that the "stuff" is inferior because of its manufacturing origin. I'm old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was mocked. I read a book many years ago called "The Waste Makers" by Vance Packard. It talked about what he called planned obsolescence or purposely designing products to fail at an expected time. Great idea if you have 100,000 light fixtures to maintain. Remember when US made cars lasted about three years, then started falling apart? What I do know, like tax breaks for the unemployed, good deals for the penniless fits nicely into oxymoron territory.
ReplyDeleteKat,
ReplyDelete"The new one makes the worst coffee I've ever tasted."
THROW it out!!! you don't need to drink bad coffee!!
I use a 30 old drip pot and boil the water in a saucepan