TRYING to spend my money locally!

[rue]

Wow! What a great story Pompidou! I can only hope that this kind of thing spreads all over the US

 

[sheeplady]

http://adirondackdailyenterprise.co...Enthusiastic-opening-for-Community-Store.html

This showed up in my Facebook today because my lender only lends to these sort of socially conscious cooperative enterprises. Talk about buying locally - a whole bunch of townspeople in a small town in New York worked together to open a community owned store. Seems exactly like what everyone here would like. Shame it's not more widespread. Kudos to them.

That is wonderful! I wish something like that would open up near my parents (who are also in the Adirondacks, but a much smaller place than Saranac Lake). I think it's a great idea and I hope it will be sustainable within the blueline, given the restrictions on development, etc.

It's really frustrating to have to drive almost an hour for a carton of milk, and have to drive another half an hour to get to anything other than a Walmart.

 

[Edward]

As I've commented before someplace else, even something that says "Made in the USA" doesn't necessarily mean that it's made entirely in this country. Often the components and subassemblies are made somewhere else.

Oddly enough, I know a bit about the legal issue on this is the US, but not the UK. It has often come up for discussion in the electric guitar playing community, where many people still seem to believe that they have magic trees in the US, and elves who know more about music than anyone else in the world making guitars out of them. lol The basic standard is that final assembly and finishing of the product has to be in the US, but as I understand it every last component could be manufactured elsewhere and it would still count as "Made in the USA". Seems a little dishonest to me, but with the strength of the patriotic dollar in the US I can see why any company would be very keen to have that label on their product if at all possible.

That's why China was/is so attractive to manufacturers. Many countries with cheap labor are also politically unstable. China is unique in that regard in that they have the cheap labor AND political stability thanks to their authoritarian regime.

True, and there doesn't seem to be much chance of that changing radically anytime soon. As much as anything, this is because however much we in the West might value it, this notion of "democracy" is simply an alien concept to the Chinese. While it's popular to blame it all on the CPC, the simple fact is that China has never known anything but authoritarian rule, so by and large people just accept what is culturally familiar. A fairly universal human approach, I suppose.... given how big a proportion of people never bother to vote (or even take pride in the fact they "don't do politics", something I've heard right across the Western world, and especially in the English speaking countries), it seems to me they don't much care about the system they live under either. The best way of ensuring any form of state continues might just turn out to be mass apathy!

Heck, Edward, when I lived in England I couldn't see how my neighbors could afford to live in their own country! To my eyes it seemed that everything was priced similarly to the US, but with the £ instead of the $ in front of it. That would be OK, but for the exchange rate difference that meant the price was 150% or more higher than I'd pay for the same thing in the US or on base. We military were lucky in that we had the Base Exchange and the Commissary for most of our shopping. I did pop into the local shops in my village as well, though.

Undoubtedly it is more expensive to live here than in the US. In large part I think that's simply down to the scale of the place, bearing in mind that a company servicing the US can work on a much bigger scale, therefore facilitating bigger reductions in unit price. It certainly makes for a nice change when visiting the US, though I have my fingers crossed for a return to the glory days of the USD2.20 to the pound; the crash of the pound in recent years has killed a lot of my buying in from the US.

I went out the other evening to look for a nice quality omelet pan. Something made anywhere other than red China. I checked out World Market first, with no luck, then headed to Bed Bath and Beyond. I was drawn to the Calphalon stuff because of the name and reputation, and also it had a quality look and feel, but alas, as I fully expected,...."Made in China" was printed on the label. :mmph:
So after searching the entire kitchen section, I finally found one though! High quality, with a lifetime guarantee, by a company called Tramontina. Not as shiny as the Chinese stuff, but who cares. Price was right in the middle of the range too, and less expensive than most of the other big name stuff I saw.
I think that eventually though, the Chinese manufacturing capacity will stall, with this result: https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/manufacturing_supply_chain_management_made_in_america_again/

It's an interesting argument. Certainly, one reason for the booming Chinese economy is that labour costs are lower there. Not because, as some would have you believe, they routinely have children making everything (that does go on, as all over the world, alas, but it's far from the norm that some like to portray it as), but it's simply a matter of relative economies. I am involved in working with a partner university in Beijing and I routinely spend a few weeks a year out there. Some of my Chinese colleagues did their PhD in London but chose to settle in China for financial reasons. They get paid markedly less than they would earn in the UK, but relative to the local economy they are financially much better off. This sort of situation plays to the advantage of "offshore" manufacturers, of course. I have no objection to that, myself - it's a globalised economy now, and that will never change. I'm more interested in ensuring wherever possible that the people who produce my goods have been paid fairly relative to the local economy and have a reasonable standard of working conditions, representation, etc. China is doing very well out of that now, but of course a lot of formerly Chinese manufacture is moving elsewhere. Indonesia is popular, India is a source for many clothes nowadays, and increasingly the next big target will be Africa. It's going to be a long, long time before manufacture moves back the the US. While the market - the ultimate river in a society like the US - still demands cheap goods, it simply won't for the most part be practical to provide those based on American manufacture.

Clothes are terrible. There have been times where I picked up something that was made here, but the quality of the shirt was almost as bad as something that was made in China. Makes me wonder if it was really made from here.

There's no guarantee it wasn't. Being made in the US is no guarantee of quality, just as being made in China is no guarantee of a lack thereof. The quality of the product is most heavily influenced by the company ordering it. The Chinese can produce products that will outdo anything made anywhere else in the world - just as can the UK, the US, Japan..... It's simply a matter of budget. The biggest reason so many low cost goods come out of China is because they are deliberately made to the price point that the person ordering them specifies. Geography has nothing whatever to do with it.

I've heard a somewhat similar argument for store brands. Even though many (not all) store brands are cheaper; more of the profit ends up in the pockets of a single entity than if you purchase a name-brand item. In the case of a name brand item that profit is spread between the store, brand, and manufacturer/ producer rather than just the producer and store. One gentleman I knew thought that the stores get enough profit, and he wanted to spend slightly more to spread the profit around by buying name brand items.

I'd never heard this perspective before I met him.

Interesting argument, though on the flipside that means he's more likely to be giving more money to multi-nationals than a national supermarket chain, ultimately.

My buying habits have changed drastically. I know I can't buy 100% American, and I do look for as many American made or partially made products I can. But I buy for quality first and foremost.

Absolutely, it's the only sensible thing. That's what I stick to also, which does result in me buying a very broad range of things in terms of global origin as a side effect, but there's not much of a manufacturing base left here in the UK anyhow.

WalMarts in most other countries are not like ones here. Workers are organized, local products are on shelves. The business model isn't as it is here. Its more palatable.

LD

Which would tend to support my theory that these things have more to do with the market than the manufacturer. It'd interesting, though, when I hear calls from the US for protectionism, limitation to free-markets and so on. I suppose a label makes all the difference (and I don't mean "Made in USA"! ).

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

True, and there doesn't seem to be much chance of that changing radically anytime soon. As much as anything, this is because however much we in the West might value it, this notion of "democracy" is simply an alien concept to the Chinese. While it's popular to blame it all on the CPC, the simple fact is that China has never known anything but authoritarian rule, so by and large people just accept what is culturally familiar.

That actually explains why Communism, even though it's collapsed elsewhere, has managed to survive largely in Asia -- notably China, North Korea and Vietnam. And in recent years an increasing amount of manufacturing has occurred in the latter.

Being made in the US is no guarantee of quality, just as being made in China is no guarantee of a lack thereof.

In fact that has become a source of concern in many areas of collecting, such as rare coins for example. In recent years the quality of Chinese-made fakes and knock-offs has noticeably improved to the point where in many cases they're practically seamless and the experts are having a hard time keeping ahead of the curve.