I just saw that you mentioned the jewels made abroad.

Recently, I was writing an article about American flags and mardi gras beads made abroad (in China) and I found the link to this documentary called "Mardi Gras: Made in China" (http://www.mardigrasmadeinchina.com/news.html).

I just figured I'd share it with you, as you may find it interesting.

Have a good one.

Robert

thanks for the tip, robert!

To be honest, educating people about how important it is to buy American from locally owned stores ain't gonna work. Almost everything at my local hardware store is Chinese at this point and the fact is as much as I try to patronize local buinesses, they all close at 5.

"Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing. It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that no one should walk on it again." - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Substitute "big box retailer" for "shoe shops" and you've pretty well got it covered. A single shirt at Macy's cost $54 - I can't afford that. So I shop at Target, and delude myself into thinking that isn't as bad for the economy as shopping at Wal-Mart.

The problem with labor saving technology is that it is introduced into a society where labor, sold to a third party, is the primary source of income for most people. When technology enables others to sell the same labor at lower cost, everyone loses - but there's no way to stop technology from advancing within the confines of an open and free society.

The only solution I can see is to adopt a more socialist society where individual labor is not the only option for individual income. But I don't see that happening in my lifetime.

I mean, why *exactly*. I know it's a neo-con/neo-liberal boogie man, yikes tariffs! It seems to me, free trade may be worse.

Here's a quote from a review by the head of the Economic Policy Institute. He is responding to the assertion by Thomas Friedman that, “America as a whole will benefit more by sticking to the basic principles of free trade, as it always has, than by trying to erect walls.”

(this review is from http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_viewpoints_flat)

As it always has? Surely, he cannot be serious. From its very beginnings, up until the Second World War, the United States was a protectionist nation. Erecting tariff walls was the second bill George Washington signed after he became president. The economic cause of the civil war was trade policy, and the protectionists won.

It wasn’t until the Second World War had decimated our major commercial competitors that the U.S. governing class embraced free trade. Indeed, Western Europe, Japan, and Oceania similarly became modern nations behind protectionist walls.

All of these nations in their own ways managed to capture, fix, and freeze their comparative advantage by limiting imports and using government power to invest in infrastructure.

China isn't using tariffs, but they are accomplishing the same thing through currency manipulation.

Now why *exactly* is currency manipulation 'better' than tariffs?

It is way to late to even try to raise awareness and get people to buy American. There are no American goods left to buy. This past holiday season, virtually every item that I purchased or received was made in China. My brand new iPod Nano was shipped directly to me from the Apple store's warehouse in China. The makeup brushes I bought for gifts on Ebay from American sellers ended up being drop shipped from China. Every item of clothing from the economical Target item right up to the designer pieces from Nordstrom were made in China. Every time I picked up a mug, a scarf, a toy, a calendar, an electronics item, I saw the words "Make in China" stamped on it. I wanted to scream and cry at the same time. How long can a nation that produces nothing for itself continue? How will defend ourselves when all of heavy industry and high tech industries are transferring the knowledge and factories offshore? How will we feed ourselves when all of the small American farms have been forced out of business by big corporate farmers who in turn relocate their farms outside the US where they are free to pollute the landscape and treat the animals anyway they choose? Protectionism will return with a vengeance very soon or their will be no America left to protect..

Well Camille, that's a hell of a question, and it my hope that as I get the chance to dig deeper into precisely that issue I will come up with answers that satisfy both you and me. I suspect, as with most things, that figuring out those answers will be a messy process that generates different answers depending on what industry or country you are talking about.

You've previously categorized my views as being for "untrammeled free trade" which I think is inaccurate. I've tried several times to bring up Joseph Stiglitz's views on _fair trade_ -- and he is about as far from being a neocon/neoliberal as you can get -- as seeming the most sensible and _socially just_ approach to globalization that I've found, but even then, the answers on what is "just" depend a lot on who you are trying to help. Should the U.S. government be subsidizing huge agribusinesses in sugar and cotton, when removing those subsidies might provide a boost to some of the poorest farmers _in the world_? Yes, removal of those subsidies will hurt some Americans, but from a global perspective, what's more important?

Or is the sole consideration the welfare of Americans?

AS for the history of the U.S. -- i'm just ad libbing here, but it sure seems to me that different policies are appropriate when a country is developing than when it is the preeminent economic superpower in the world. Rather than close out our markets to the developing countries of the world, I'd rather see us use tax policy to redistribute the incredible wealth and capital that's already in this country to put money into education and health care and job training -- precisely the kind of "infrastructural" areas that would enable the U.S. to flourish without moving towards some kind of, in my view, totally unsustainable autarkic protectionist state in a world that is more and more interconnected.

But that's just off the top of my head. Your question is exactly what this blog is supposed to explore, and I'm going to do my best to educate myself as deeply as I can on the topic.