Monitor Audio Made in China?

A lot of tears have been shed in the media about the gradual disappearance of the middle class in America. If you trace the lineage, you will find that the middle class was born of and carried by labor unions and the decline of both have been concurrent. Yes labor unions were corrupt in many cases but they were also sabotaged by newspapers that didn't want to pay their wages and politicians and industries that found paying middle class wages very uncomfortable. During that period, however, the U.S. rose to the very pinnacle of world manufacturing prowess. Today we don't manufacture much besides WMDs. Everything else is being outsourced.

The upside to all of this is that the possibility of a world economy might just put an end to war if the people who usually get them started are vested everywhere.

A friend of mine has said that Americans have just had it too good for too long and now things are starting to level out between us and the rest of the world. I don't share that view. I think our country is being strip mined and will be left a broken third world carcass within 20 years or so. I might just live to see it happen.

Macrojack,

I must admit to being a bit shocked by the "our country [America] is being strip-mined" comment. Apart from the fact that the greatest environmental danger to American soil comes from American companies paying American lobbyists who effectively "pay" American politicians voted into office (not by the wealthiest few Americans, but by the other 90% of us (or the 50-odd percent of the other 90% of us who actually bother to vote) to make it easy to strip-mine vast tracts of currently un-inhabited land so the rest of us can feel better about driving cars (SUVs) which are often less fuel-efficient than the gas-guzzlers of 30 years ago.

In terms of American "being" strip-mined, it is we who are doing it to ourselves. It is not foreigners coming in to the US forcing us to buy more gadgets more often. Everyone wants their retirement nest egg to grow 10% a year (some 3-times GDP growth) but that only comes from less profitable enterprise dying out and more profitable enterprise picking up the slack. It is the American way. It is the way America became "great" - through a long prrocess of "strip-mining" other, more-developed economies (England, Germany, France). It did not help those countries that they accelerated their own relative demise through wars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but some of those wars were started by groups looking to re-live or re-establish their declining greatness (hmmm... rings a bell).

The world is what it is. It is up to all of us to figure out how to make best use of it. If everyone wants American democracy and capitalism to become more of a social welfare capitalist economy like France, Germany, or Japan, then we will vote it into place. However, trying to get voters to address real economic issues (like education, science and development, and conservation - all of which challenge existing regimes and break out new, eventually highly profitable, technologies) is a real humdinger of a problem. Voters seem to appreciate sound bites and "feel good about America" speeches a great deal more than change. And very few seem to look to the greater good, despite the fact that a slightly smaller piece of a much larger pie that more people like is often a much better piece of pie to have.

T bone - Your meaning isn't clear to me and, by your answer I gather you took me a bit too literally. By "strip mined", I meant plundered, not actually mined, although that meaning holds a certain literary imperative.

We are a nation of paper pushers and servants at this point. We are falling behind the first world in medical services and life expectancy. We have outsourced our means of production. Our schools are falling behind. We are over policed, over regulated and underachieving. The vaunted American supremacy lives on in our minds but there aren't many facts left to support it.

Our basketball team is doing very well in international competition right now though. If that's what we value, that's what we deserve.

Macrojack, I did understand that your reference was figurative. My initial reference to "strip-mined" was literal, but I wanted to note that any literal strip-mining of America is being done by Americans. I disagreed less with the content of the word, more the mode of the verb as "being strip-mined" or "plundered" implies passivity and lack of ability to change the outcome. My point was that, in aggregate, Americans are doing this to themselves through the choices they make in policies, politicians, personal consumption, and parenting. And despite the fact that I agree with almost everything in your second paragraph (I don't happen to believe the US is over-regulated), it is ALL available for change. There is nothing that cannot be reversed... if we care enough... end o' my rant.

And now back to your regularly scheduled thread on Monitor Audio speakers made in China.

I just bought a Monitor Audio Silver RS-LCR and it says on the box "Made in China". I thought monitor Audio speakers are made in the UK.

Let's just pray your speakers aren't made with something toxic...