Made in the USA means a lot to me. Look, I've got kids who will be entering the job market within a couple of years. And so do many of you! I hope there's more out there for them than flippin' burgers or makin' coffee.
I live in the Philly area. Here's a stat that may surprise some. Ten percent of ALL World War II war materiel was made in the Delaware Valley area: ships; steel; tanks; uniforms, etc, etc. Did you know that the USS New Jersey was built in the Philly shipyards??
During the 1950s and 1960s, Philly hosted every industry you can think of: steel; chemicals; heavy manufacturing, textiles, even insurance, banking and finance. You ever hear of Botany 500 -- that's Daroff & Co, Broad and Lehigh. Daroff employed hundreds if not thousands of people. Daroff is gone. Walk into any clothing store and check where most of our clothing is made.
In many ways, Archie Bunker was more Philadelphian than NYC. It's all gone. Tourism, restaurants, sh*t has taken its place. Philadelphia's population has shrunk from over 2 million in the 50s to less than 1.4 million. What's more important is that the population has radically changed. Instead of tax paying blue collar workers, we have more people living in poverty and welfare than you can imagine.
Anyone check out the news blip last week about the factory fire in Bangladesh -- hundreds of workers killed. Why?? Maybe because Bangladesh doesn't have OSHA, fire codes, EPA rules, health care insurance, social security, minimum wage protection. How can we compete against that? What does fair trade mean if our working citizens have to go back to 1900 sweat shop conditions. It took decades to turn those conditions around.
So my friends, I ask you. Are we really better off buying cheap sh*t made overseas by exploited workers, while our workforce get's dumber, less skilled, demoralized, less educated, and so forth.
Folks, I remember the old saw my Econ prof taught us back in the 70s. "Just think of it. With technology, importing cheap goods, look how our standard of living will improve. The hands of workers will be unshackled from the drear of mundane work, and the human mind will be free to create new jobs and opportunities for all." What a crock! Today . . . you'd better get your kids' butts into high tech, health care, or the like, or else they'll be flippin' burgers. What's worse, if they go to college, a useless degree and thousands in school loans.
So . . . damn straight. Buy American or at least Canadian;. Pay more if you have to, but support our economy or else our kids will have less than us and our country will become a second class world power.
And since I'm on a roll, one more point. Our elected officials are either nitwits or flat out liers. If they don't know what the underlying problem is and the long term solution, they're idiots. If they do and they're not telling us the truth and educating the polity, then they're liers. We're not in 16 trillion of debt for nothin.'
And by the way . . . I'm proud to say that all of my electronic gear is ARC, made in the USA. Turntable -- VPI, made in New Jersey. Cartridge -- Soundsmith Zephyr, made by Peter Ledermann in Peekskill, NY. Speakers --Paradigm S8s, made in Canada.
