Made in America

Pgawan, it is a much more complex issue than consumer demand. The market sets the prices for products. Companies then make the decision to produce those products based on profitability and capital investment. (It takes money to make money). Just a few years ago, I was paying $89/month for cable but now it costs me $140/month for the same level of service. I am not happy about that at all; but I have not found a suitable, cheaper alternative. This cable outfit is making a ton of money for their investors and they reward their CEO handsomely for it. The market dictates the prices and companies must find ways to produce and make a profit. The point is, most of our mainstream products are produced by large global companies. These companies have resources the world over and the decision to invest in this country or that is based largely on profitability. What you did for me yesterday doesn't matter. Its all about what can you do for me today. Senior level management is filled with egocentric people. That is a reality. They likely, generally speaking, have failed marriages and/or fractured family lives. These same management teams also fail to maintain relationships with their direct employees that produce their products. Being egocentric, they tend to severe those relationships and move on. They cannot break those paradigms just as much as sometimes older manufacturing plants are not able to break old paradigms and move on. A good example is a certain tire plant in the midwest a couple of decades ago. It was a US owned plant. Quality was poor, productivity was poor and the plant was loosing money. The management closed the plant and sold it. They said that they had no other options. They blamed the workers for all of the issues. A foreign firm bought the plant and rehired the same workers. They invested money into the plant and it became a top producer with excellent quality and profitability. The only change was the management team. Is that the case every time? No, of course not, but it is more often than not. The relationship between senior management and their manufacturing plants is just like a marriage. Both sides have to work at it and let go of the baggage. Egocentric management teams, however, tend to fold up the game board and go home when things do not go their way. Start a new relationship in a new location and lay down their egocentric rules. It works for a while until that new plant becomes restless and tired of the onesided relationship. If you follow the news at all, you have seen this played out over and over again.
Yes, enthusiasts will pay outrageous amounts of money for nearly anything from cables to speakers and amps. There is a market for high end equipment and none of us can really guess at the motivation of the leadership of these high end US companies. Maybe they love this hobby too and they keep their manufacturing close at hand so they have more control over it and the day to day operations. Maybe they feel a sense of duty to their local community. Maybe, if they had the capital and market growth potential, they would invest in a plant overseas to generate maximum profits.

Too many maybes. Your first premise is likely the correct one. My wife here in Canada works for a well known outfit that converts full size vans into motorhomes. This company has been on a downward spiral for the last ten years due to exactly the same thing. One hand doesn't know what the other is doing. The problem is, neither does it seem to care. However in this case the workers are to blame! Consequently so is upper management. Production is down so they hire 50 workers from a plant that just went under for the same reason and guess what happened? Production actually went down. Why? Because in that 50, they also hired the management team! Upper management appears for a weekly pep talk but doesn't want to hear the details or complaints. That's up to, you got it, the management team who consistently turns a blind eye to inefficiencies in the plant. Otherwise they'd have to admit they've been incompetent letting it go for such a long time. The workers see very clearly what's going on and play along, save for a few. Everyone sees very clearly they're eventually going to be out of a job. Look what happened to General Motors. Not much difference there. Or in a lot of companies. It's not just about losing jobs overseas. New immigrants come in, see what's going on, and jump on it(but I'm referring to self employment here). Production is the number 1 goal elsewhere. The Federal government is well aware of the laxidaysical attitude of entitlement the unions have garnered and ingrained in the mentality of the labor force. Up here in Canada the immigration flood gates are wide open. It's no different south of us. So we have companies heading overseas while the Federal government tries desperately to stave off the inevitable by increasing immigration. But the immigrants ultimately end up adopting the status quo as soon as they learn the ropes. No one's gonna make a fool out of them. In the the end the population just keeps increasing along with the deficit.

Don't get me started on cable companies. My bill was going to go from around $130/month to over $200 for the very same service. I had to call customer retention and argue for many a minute until I got a supervisor who very quickly and politely gave me the same service for $15 more per month. Getting that supervisor was more difficult than in the past. Persevere folks, persevere.

What we now have are telecommunication cartels that carve up territory and block any and all competition. What I pay $145/month for I can get in France for about $45/month because they allow competition. Who would have thought? Aren't we told that competition and "free markets" are what drive this economy?

Please.

All the best,
Nonoise

Using cable service was a bad example on my part. I was trying to make a point about how market drives pricing, but cable, like health care is a service not a product and they do not face global competition like the manufacturing industry.
From a consumer standpoint global competition is a good thing. I am all for it. The point I was making is that the system is unbalanced or unfair at times. What I have learned over the years in industry is that if you or the company performs poorly, then eventually you and/or the company goes under; but the converse is not always true. If you perform well and the company performs well; you may still loose your job. Success is no guarantee.
Here is how global competition has been good to us as consumers. The government's CPI has some funky calculations so I reference things to the price of a gallon of gasoline. (Price based on my region over the years.) I will use a television set since they have been in production for several decades. I recall that my dad bought our first 25" color TV in late 1968 for $400. That was a SOTA TV and a lot of money. $400 back then bought about 1800 gallons of gasoline. Today, consider a 60" 3D HDTV as SOTA. It costs the equivalent of about 788 gallons of gasoline. Quite the reduction in cost over the years thanks to technology, productivity improvements and competition. How about USA made high end gear? I will use my favorite preamps for an example. The ARC SP-15 top of the line preamp cost the equivalent of about 4500 gallons of gasoline in the early nineties. Today, their top end Ref 5 costs about 3800 gallons of gasoline. So maybe global competition has been good for the hifi market as well. Maybe, if I compared the 40th Anniversary edition to the SP-15 it would not look so favorable, but I'm not sure that is apples to apples.
Now, look at the service industry which apparently has no global competition. I can recall my cable bill was $20/month in 1989. That is because at that time the bill increased 10% per year and I made up my mind that when it hit $20/month I would cancel. (I would dance in streets today for a bill like that.) So that was equivalent to about 16 gallons of gasoline per month. I still have basic cable and if I back out the internet service and just look at cable, it costs me 27 gallons of gasoline today. That is an 11 gallons of gasoline per month increase! For the same basic service! How about healthcare? I was paying $22/month for healthcare in 1990 when my oldest son was born. btw- It was an HMO and his birth cost me $10 out of pocket. I miss those days. So in 1990, my healthcare insurance cost was about 18 gallons of gasoline per month. Sure, I have changed companies over the years, but I have been with the same company now for quite a while and have still seen big year over year increases. So much so that today my healthcare insurance costs me a whopping 100 gallons of gasoline per month! That is a 455% increase in gallons of gasoline over 22 years! Yikes!

Tonywinsc, yes I realize this is quite complex. I agree with your assessments and can provide some examples from my own experience to support your comments. Also, I think your comments about management and the lack of true leadership are spot on. I would simply add that the perception of consumer demand is what drives the market. In addition, it would be foolish to ignore the contribution of investor demands on publicly traded companies.

For me, made in America is not as important as performance, quality, and price. My spending reflects this.

Nonoise, the cable industry is not a free market in any way and the subsequent high prices are the result. This is a classic illustration. There is no competition as most locations have only one cable service provider option. The cable companies try to argue that DSL, satellite broadband, and satellite dish are competitors. I would consider them substitute services, not competitors. Economists have a name for this, but it escapes me at the moment. Practically, it is a government approved monopoly.