Slashdot Mirror

Which also happens in the US.

Apple are the heavyweight in cheap consumer electronics, and American owned. We should be asking why they aren't building in the US, especially as most of what they "build" is putting together other companies' components.

And we should be defining what "make (or made)" and "build (or built)" mean. If I buy a motherboard from taiwan and build a computer from it in the US, is it "Made in America"? What if the motherboard is from taiwan, CPU from Arizona, hard drive and case from China, power supply from California and I build the computer in Dallas, is it "Made in America"? What if the parts are mostly from the US but they're assembled in Mexico, what is that? And we can take it further, what if the parts are made in the US but the rare earth elements used in those parts are from China, where is it "made"?

Car manufactures have been playing this game for years, buying parts from overseas but assembling the car in the US and calling them "American made". It's so bad that there's a American-Made Index where they rate cars based on how many of their parts come from the US and vehicles like the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord are more "American made" than the Chevy Traverse or Ford Explorer and American icons like the F-150 and Silverado don't even make the list, so people buying trucks from Ford or GM thinking they're supporting America really aren't, they'd be better off buying a Toyota Tundra.

Obviously if the metal, chemicals and other rare materials were mined in the US to make the parts in the US used to assemble the device in the US then it's 100% American made, but that's almost never going to happen so we need to clear this up before we can call something "Made in America".

found some!

From the extensive 5 minutes of research I just performed it appears that the only mass market brand of shoe that is actually made in the USA are from New Balance & Wolverine.

You can however order shoes & boots from any of the fine American companies on this page if you don't mind something a little less mass market.

http://www.usstuff.com/shoes.htm

There's a lot of information on the web.

You can get a couple of chapters of an eBook here about buying American: http://www.howtobuyamerican.com/index.php

You can buy online a lot of places -- though I suppose it's not too easy to tell whether the place is being honest:
http://www.buydirectusa.com/
http://www.usstuff.com/
http://www.madeinusa.com/
http://www.americanapparel.net/

Shopping at Walmart should really be the absolute last option (below not buying whatever thing at all).

And here's a blog where a guy appears to be attempting to make a list:
http://madeintheusabyamericans.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-new-blog.html

When you buy things made in Taiwan, you're buying with US dollars. US dollars are only worth anything to the Taiwanese if they can buy something from the US or trade them with someone else who does. If no one wants US goods/services the value of the US dollar drops. This makes foreign goods more expensive to US citizens and local goods cheaper. (Ignoring problems like child labor, etc. where the Government steps in and says you won't trade.)

The US dollar was high because it made the most goods/services because the best, brightest, most ambitious people immigrated to the US where the best jobs were.

Feel free not to believe me, as I am a foreigner, but the 'Brain drain' of our best and brightest going to the US used to be (maybe still is) considered a major drain on our economy.

Your standard of living would drop like a stone.

As long as it's more economical to offshore than pay a living wage, our standard of living NEEDS to drop like a stone.

Just throw out everything made in Taiwan and see what you have left.

Everything that is made in Taiwan today was once made in the United States- at a higher level of quality- with natural resources found in the United States.

Check out some basic economics. How much does a computer made with 100% US parts cost?

Well, at US Stuff Computers, looks like about twice what foreign made would be. But then again, if you're a PATRIOT instead of a TRAITOR, that's the price you pay to make sure your NEIGHBOR can survive.

You can find Made-in-USA shirts at Walmart. They only cost about a dollar more.

But good luck finding flip-flops or laptops _not_ made in China.