[general_re]

It's not about having some a priori prejudice against American products, I think. We all want our nation to do well. But be realistic - when I shop for anything, including cars, I look at price and I look at quality. If American products are competitive in those respects, I'll buy them, and if they aren't, I won't. If domestic automakers can consistently make cars of the price and/or quality of their foreign competition, I'll give them a look. But if American automakers can't make cars like that, then they deserve to go out of business. I happen to think they can, but for a long time they didn't have to, so they fell into bad habits.

If we can get cheaper, better cars elsewhere, it is wasteful and inefficient to produce cars here. We live in a world of scarce and limited economic resources, and we should be allocating those resources elsewhere, rather than trying to prevent dinosaurs from going extinct. "Buy American" is nothing more than a restatement of the commandment to "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain", IMO...

[irv]

"Buy American" is nothing more than a restatement of the commandment to "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain", IMO...

I often run into the same thing on a smaller scale. People say, "buy local." Around here, it's "buy Kodak, because it helps keep your neighbors employed."

But I can buy a product of exactly the same quality for a third the price from Fuji or Canon (depending on the product) and my neighbors are getting laid off right and left, even in those relatively few periods when Kodak makes a profit. So, why am I supposed to buy American again?