Again, I agree with you to buy American. However, you must acknowledge the fundamental reasons that blue-collar manufacturing jobs have left the United States - GOVERNMENT!
It’s not consumers that are the problem. Consumers will almost always purchase the cheapest product that fits their particular need and that product will usually be foreign. Our government has made simple American manufacturing non-competitive because they are involved at every level in every way. The government adds costs to every single product from start to finish.
I am not looking for an argument and whenever possible I buy American, but the slogan won’t fix the real problem - excess and out of control government. It is frightening to realize that it is cheaper to buy a plastic widget made by a machine in China and shipped overseas than it is to buy an American widget made on the same machine by an American worker. Why? Government.
Rick Perry, for all of his faults and his disappointing run for the GOP nomination, truly understands this. If you listen to him articulate the reasons businesses should move to Texas you will understand that it’s not just the Federal government that is strangling job production. It’s state and local government also.
Our nation now has a hostile environment to start or maintain a business. It’s about to get much worse with Obamacare. It is a vicious cycle that will be made worse by increased government spending as revenues decrease and that is why we are dying. A bumper sticker won’t fix it.
Actually you’ve identified half the problem.
Government.
The other half the problem is ... we’ve exported all our manufacturing to China.
Government is only half our problem. We need to fix all of it:
Stop growing government. But at the same time, bring back American jobs.
We cannot just dump American jobs.
Which is what we did.
Then what?