mondeo
New member
Now if they would just f'ing let us buy f'ing booze on a f'ing Sunday or after 9PM...
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Buying "Made In USA" only
- Thread starter legalskier
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legalskier
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My new drumset is 100% made in the USA... South Carolina...
I'm curious- how's the quality/workmanship?
ctenidae
Active member
Article in Wired a monh or so ago about al the quality control issues coming out of China, especially for smaller orders. When a low saleable yield from an order is combined with delays caused by both shipping and having larger customers bump you out of the queue and higher shipping costs due to fuel prices, all of a sudden manufacturing inteh US starts to get more competitive. Interesting ideas- I know therre's still a lot of jobber manufacturing done in the midwest, and there's actually a surprising amount of small batch contract electronics manufacturing going on.
Maufacturing's not dead in theStats, it's just generally not large scale, I guess.
Maufacturing's not dead in theStats, it's just generally not large scale, I guess.
Depends on you who you ask. This report states that 80% of the world's power needs could be supplied by renewable resources by 2050 with the proper investment.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/09/ipcc-renewable-energy-power-world#history-link-box
We're actually moving some of our lower volume circuit board assemblies out of a contract manufacturer in Mexico to a different one in Arizona. Not because of cost, but because of performance. The Mexican plant is not able to produce our high mix at low volumes very effectively, nor do I think they really want to. They're more setup to run higher volumes.
Dr Skimeister
New member
Sounds more like a problem of the organization choosing the wrong contract manufacturer for the expected job than whether the manufacturer is in the US or Mexico.
mondeo
New member
I'm suspicious of that. I'd be surprised if, considering increasing energy requirements as well, 40% is even a reasonable mark. And once solar and wind are built out, the percentage of energy requirements they can fulfill will start dropping.
The bigger picture is that we're behind in wind and solar, even with significant gov't investment I don't see the U.S. gaining a significant technical advantage, and the opportunity to keep that knowledge within the U.S. is limited. We have the opportunity to create a significant lead in fusion, however, which has vast long term implications. It's a lot easier to maintain a lead than catch up others. Plus I want a Mr. Fusion.
mondeo
New member
Oh, and manufacturing has increased by 50% in the U.S. since 1980.
Mostly true, but that gets into corporate politics, which I'm not getting into. Lets just say that our company was basically forced to use the place in Mexico due to cost alone instead of the place in Arizona that we wanted to use in the first place.
My point being that I doubt the company I work for is the only one who moved work out of the country for apparent cost savings only to realize later on that there's other factors involved than just the cost per unit.
Me too!
thorski
New member
Only if we lived in a free country.
ChileMass
Active member
Source for this data?
Maybe production has increased based on productivity driven by technology, but I guarantee you the number of manufacturing jobs has decreased just as dramatically over that span. It's great to have better productivity, don't get me wrong, I'm all for that. But we need jobs for the middle- and working-class people that they can live on. Guys in my hometown used to work at the local paper mill and they employed guys pushing brooms and painting walls at a liveable wage. Not any more.
Goes to my point that if you young-uns don't pick the right college major, you're going to get squeezed out in the information/technology-driven employment market. I know too many graduating kids that want to be photographers or social workers instead of accountants or engineers. Living in Mom & Dad's basement in the future......
mondeo
New member
I came across it when I was looking through stuff for my previous post, can't remember exactly where. It might be value of exports, which would make sense seeing as how the U.S. is focused on stuff we're better at now. $1bn in airplane exports doesn't support nearly as many manufacturing jobs than $1bn in cheap clothing exports. But the jobs it does produce are much higher paying (when's the last time you heard of a $100K/year seamstress?)
I wouldn't weigh anecdotal reductions in manufacturing that heavily. A lot of manufacturing moved South in the 90s, so reduction in the NE industrial base doesn't mean much on the national level. My company's closed down a lot of the work in CT, but has moved a significant amount of that to Maine and Georgia.
But yeah, the culture in this country got wrapped up way too much in too long a period of prosperity. People were comfortable, so they told kids to do what makes you happy, not what makes you money. Too many liberal arts majors.
Edd
Well-known member
What big box store are you referring to? I've become mildly obsessed with this topic recently. I spent an unfortunate afternoon in Walmart and the Christmas Tree Shop and went around looking at where product after product was made and found way less than 1% made in the U.S.
Geoff
Well-known member
There's nothing wrong with being a liberal arts major as long as part of your education is picking up the skills required to be competitive in the world economy. You'd better have your math skills up. You need computer skills beyond sending text messages and web surfing. Those need to be core requirements both at the secondary level and at the college level.
