Comments on: Why Don’t We Buy American More Often?

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Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:06:01 +0000

[...] Why Don’t We Buy American More Often? [...]

By: Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:40:56 +0000

I am the son of a steelworker from the 1960s and 1970s. After the 1970s, the great steel mills of the US went out of business. Guess what? Today, we manufacture more steel than we ever did during that time, except that we do so with fewer than half as many workers and plants.

Guess what? Technology changes. Economics change. The world changes. And I regret to say that the people involved in the process sometimes don’t. Our parents (largely our fathers, as we tended to exclude women from the workforce until the 1970s) lived not in a golden age of lifetime employment in the same job, but rather in a blip in a changing world where people do very different things at different times of their lives.

It’s not bad; those that can change with the times will do well. Those who cannot, and those who believe they have a lifetime high-paying manufacturing job will be disappointed. I feel for them; I’m sure they are good people. But they are living a life of their imagination, not of reality.

By: Prasanth

Prasanth — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:45:19 +0000

It is amusing to see the anti-globalization back lash and the “buy American” movement in USA. Pre 1991, my country, India was a closed economy. Jobs were scarce, private industry was heavily regulated and one had to wait years to get even basic stuff like a phone connection (Would you believe that there was a 7 year waiting list to get a phone connection?!!).

That was also the time US was preaching open markets and globalization to countries like India. US wants access to these countries markets so persuading countries like India to “open up” made good sense as a policy. However, what people should realize that nothing comes free. When countries like India opened up, it unleashed the pent up energy of the people resulting in a boom of private enterprise which looked to big markets like US for revenue and profits.

By: Jenni

Jenni — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:22:23 +0000

World globalization, is where parts are made all over the place, to the lowest bidder, and can be put together in the country you live, or not. That it is usually made by the lowest bidder, from countries that can make their workers work for very little money, like communist China, and will costs the corporations little, and can sell to us at a lot. And the corporations in the US put their holdings offshore, to an island, so they can’t be taxed on it. And with the countries having problems, from the banks, and other such companies, dealings, put us in this deep dodo. But not them, we are bailing them out, and our future generations will be paying for what they are doing for a long time to come. Just look at where all the stuff around you come from?
I do what I can to find American made, and buy that. Which can be misleading, since some of the places aren’t in American states, but the islands around us, where they are holding the wages down, to sell cheaply to us. Our want for cheap stuff, is causing a lot of the wages to be help down for the people around, making the stuff for us, over here. We use to protest about sweat shop and slave labor, but now it goes on, for us, and no one says a thing.
I buy jewelry, beaded, and others items, from the people who make them, so I know who made them. And go to social events where a lot of artisans sell their items at booths. Which most may not know they can do. Like at a powwow, where there are usually a lot of boothes, and anyone can go to check it out. Or the tribal arts fair. Check on line. At arts and crafts fairs around your area. The farmers market for food. I just get the dolls, since I know where to get the patterns for the clothes, and know people who can make them, for my grandchildren, for toys and gifts.
Check for fair trade items, in coffees, and other food items. Here in the US, there is a lot of going back to old fashioned, now called “organic”, ways.
I hope that will help some.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:35:50 +0000

We have the same kind of push in Australia – to buy Aussie. This is nothing new, our manufacturing industry has been dying (was never really sustainable??) for years. Dick Smith, an Aussie entrepeneur has his own label of Australia made and owned food products – but the taste is yuk so I don’t buy them. There are also a few grocery stores that stock only Aussie products.

I’m somewhat ignorant of the whole globalisation debate, so you may have to educate me – but I’m not sure what is so wrong with it – except for the industrialisation of food and the exploitation of people with less power. But that unfortunately happens regardless.

I mean you are a blogger. What you do is global. You are participating in the new economy. You earn your living from a global phenomenon. I’m sure you have readers from all over the world.

There will, I hope come a time when there will be no “us” and “them”. I’m sure that some poor person in China is deserving of a job just like an Aussie or an American. And I’m unemployed. It’s hard at the moment.

I am a student of history. We have seen a lot of change over the Longue Duree. I think it’s more empowering to embrace change and ensure that it is for the better, have a say at driving change that is equitable and sustainable and fair, rather than be a victim of the inevitable. Rather than be “crushed under the grinding stone of history’. And part of that change today is manufacturing going off shore – same as here in Australia.

But that’s just my opinion, and like I said, I don’t konw a lot about it, so I’m open to suggestion. I realise (intimately) that its hard to lose a job – I don’t have one either.