Monitor Audio Made in China?

Even for those who think unions should be eliminated (which for the most part, they have), do you still think non-union manufacturing in the US can compete with workers at $0.50 a day? For the people who sit back and say "it doesn't matter where it is made" they obviously feel comfortable and insulated, and believe that they will never personally be affected by the ongoing trend of moving manufacturing oversees. Think you are above it - wait until it knocks at your door. It is not just manufacturing, as it continues to move up the food chain through functions like R&D and everything associated with technology. I will pay twice as much for something made in the USA if I have to. Next time you ask why, you should also ask yourself what you think your children will do for a living 10 or 20 years from now?

Labor is just one way that the Chinese cut costs. I spoke to a CEO of a well known speaker maker at a show recently. Some drivers he ordered from a well known scandanavian company were apparently sourced from china without his knowledge and contrary to his contract. He doesn't know how many fake drivers got into his products. he confronted the maker and has since refused to pay invoices from them - they haven't responded at all to his accusations or asked for payment. He told me of another well known maker that had its designs stolen by the chinese maker who is now selling them under HIS brand name in the chinese market - with no renumeration to the US company.

Then there is the story of well known chinese electronics maker who pirated all his internal software - ie, never paid licensing fees for the mpg decoders etc that make his DVD/CD players run. Sure the price is cheap - if you rip someone off. Intellectual property rights simply do not exist for most Chinese (like civil rights, human rights and worker rights.)

There is no free lunch, gents. If you think you can get the same level of quality for a 95% discount, I hope you don't mind lead in your kids toys, or poison in your toothpaste and cat food.

It's a fair question to ask under what conditions things we buy are made. I don't think it's a given that if a speaker or an amp is made in the US or in Canada or in Europe, then it's made more fraily than if it's made in China or is outsourced to save money. But there is some correlation between exploitative practices and outsourcing to countries that have cruel work practices (such as employing children and denying people basic benefits and rights). I don't want to support the exploitation of others, and if that's funny to some people, so much the worse for all of us.

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.