Posted on 04/14/2016 10:23:32 AM PDT by Olog-hai
The vast majority of Americans say they prefer lower prices instead of paying a premium for items labeled “Made in the U.S.A.,” even if it means those cheaper items are made abroad, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.
While presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are vowing to bring back millions of American jobs lost to China and other foreign competitors, public sentiment reflects core challenges confronting the U.S. economy. Incomes have barely improved, forcing many households to look for the most convenient bargains instead of goods made in America. Employers now seek workers with college degrees, leaving those with only a high school degree who once would have held assembly lines jobs in the lurch. And some Americans who work at companies with clients worldwide see themselves as part of a global market.
Nearly three in four say they would like to buy goods manufactured inside the United States, but those items are often too costly or difficult to find, according to the survey released Thursday. A mere 9 percent say they only buy American. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
The price would be lower if not for the taxation and regulatory costs. And the dollar’s value would not be as junky as it is.
Me too. AND I refuse to drive a Jap or German car.
Assembly line work is, for the most part, obsolete in America and around the world. Even China is buying and developing robots by the factory-full.
“Americans have been conditioned to prefer lower cost items...however, that conditioning can and will be reversed if/when the manufacture of those goods returns to the USA.”
By all means, let’s have the government initiate a behavior modification program to ensure that Americans are conditioned to paying higher prices for items.
Just ask China, Korea, India and Taiwan to raise their minimum wage to $15/hour........................
This is a problem with modern society’s disposable goods mentality. Used to be that clothes were mended, vehicles fixed, toys made by hand. Nowadays, clothes are thrown out at the sight of a loose thread or a lost button, vehicles are scrapped after a check engine light comes on, and toys are made with cheap plastic that breaks in less than a year of regular use.
I’m 36, and my wife, who is older than me, “hates” that I fix everything. I grew up with a single mother who worked three jobs to keep a head over my brother’s and my head. We mended our own clothes, wore shoes until they fell apart, and fixed our toys when they broke. If we went back to the mentality of resilience and self-sustenance, we might realize savings over the long haul, but Americans are so conditioned to just throw away things that aren’t like new, I doubt we’ll ever see the old days again excepting maybe a severe depression.
Not those of us who remember a time when most items were of higher quality and things with moving parts were built in a way they could be repaired instead of tossed into the trash.
wrong question.
would you rather have a job? or have slightly cheaper items available to purchase?
Is the correct question.
According to the American MEDIA and the DEMOCRAT party American companies are those who are polluting the earth, sickening their customers, mistreating their poor downtrodden employees, cheating the government, ripping off the consumer, endangering people’s health for EVIL profits, corrupting the culture, and mistreating third world countries.
When an American consumer reaches for a product, the evil American name jumps out and he/she remembers yesterday’s rant by a Democrat politician about the company’s evil deeds.
Result..buy something from a third world tyranny, where nothing is openly said about anything.
“Believe me folks would much prefer to purchase better quality products produced here even if they have to pay slightly more. Over the long run you end up saving money since the product will last much longer.”
Great idea. Let’s completely eliminate all 12,000 tariffs on imported items and give the consumer the freedom to choose between high quality/price items and the imported items.
“The key is to bring back good jobs so the folks can afford to buy quality products.”
Why not just raise the minimum wage to $50/hour? Then we would all have good jobs and could afford to buy each other’s over priced products.
Quality is the key.
Cheap foreign stuff does not last.
Remember when American Made was a status of quality? Washing machines, refrigerators, power tools, machine tools, etc. would outlast everything from overseas. Now, it’s all crap that breaks even the first time you use it.
I bought a Chinese made jigsaw at one of those travelling tool shows once and it broke the first time I tried to use it........................
Well, for the record, China is a second-world tyranny. The second world didn’t go away with the fall of the USSR, and with the replacement “Eurasian Union”, the USSR came back.
Many factory jobs today involve working with highly sophisticated equipment requiring very specialized , technical knowledge. Smart high-school grads can be trained to do this work, but most of them go off to college. The semi-skilled assembly-line jobs of the past have largely disappeared.
[I’m 36, and my wife, who is older than me, “hates” that I fix everything. I grew up with a single mother who worked three jobs to keep a head over my brother’s and my head. We mended our own clothes, wore shoes until they fell apart, and fixed our toys when they broke. If we went back to the mentality of resilience and self-sustenance, we might realize savings over the long haul, but Americans are so conditioned to just throw away things that aren’t like new, I doubt we’ll ever see the old days again excepting maybe a severe depression.]
Depression Part 2 is coming. I, too, hate seeing everything thrown out. I’ve already been hit hard by this “economy” which is a whole lot of outsourcing and H1’B stuff. “Hard” is an understatement. People are so used to things going “as normal” that they’re not as prepared for when the music stops.
I wasn’t prepared enough. And when things changed, it changes quickly and you’ve got a lot less power to do something about it. As an aside, you find out real quick, who are your real friends (including family) and who are not.
Poor people will not have cheap goods at Walmart for a while; but if they are working at good jobs, they will be able to afford to buy American goods and they will have more dignity.
Well the article said 67% preferred the lower-priced product, which meant that you fall into the 1/3 that doesn't.
For some goods "American-made" is a positive. For others, it's not. For a long time, Japanese cars were better made than many of their American counterparts. Even now, there are still an awful lot of goods -- particularly electronics -- where certain foreign goods are simply a much better value for the price.
*By Mexicans
Depends on the Assembly Line. Except, more and more, assembly line people will be engineers and technician, managing and maintaining the robots.
Of course, if you just want mindless assembly-line drones, you can always hit up the social sciences departments. . . (grin)
Most people don’t care - until their job disappears.
As long as it’s the other guy, it’s not much of a problem.
American attitudes have been hopelessly manipulated by those promoting the cult of "Diversity," which treats people & peoples, as basically interchangeable. Immediate material advantage increases in importance--vastly increases in importance--when ties of common history, kinship & community, are deliberately undermined and trivialized by an Academic/Media complex, who has very little concern or understanding of how normal human societies function.
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