Americans: do you care if it was made in America?

At 18 cents a day we're talking about $65 a year for each American to spend on American made products.

That's really the difference between me buying one set of sheets with some American connection and buying one set of sheets without an American connection.

If my making that decision helps to keep one American worker employed so that s/he can buy socks from China (as per the video) doesn't that, in turn, help the Chinese economy too?

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I'm honest enough to say that I'd rather see poor kids in other countries not making my goods. In fact, I'd rather see kids ANYWHERE not working, and I certainly can't get behind a policy of buying their goods just so they'll have some sweatshop job.

I wasn't actually talking about child labor but while we are on that point: As bad as they can be they take them because the alternative is often much much worse. Krugman wrote a good piece about how trafficking in that particular moral outrage tends to hurt the kids more than help them.

Quote:

But matters are not that simple, and the moral lines are not that clear. In fact, let me make a counter-accusation: The lofty moral tone of the opponents of globalization is possible only because they have chosen not to think their position through. While fat-cat capitalists might benefit from globalization, the biggest beneficiaries are, yes, Third World workers.

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html

2 Replies

@JTT,

Got your knickers in a twist again, JTT?

"Tell your teenagers to stay in school"
I don't know about the USA, and whether you mollycoddle them in education ad infinitum, but in Europe it's not uncommon for teenagers to enter the work market at 18 or 19. Some stay on and go for degrees or vocational qualifications, but many don't.
If you want to split hairs, let me change it to "when your offspring enter the work market", then the specific age is left out and you won't get all hormonal again.

"Tell your teenagers that grandpa is a hypocritical old geezer"

Explain, as that would surely only apply if I were saying one thing and doing another. As I have given you no evidence that I do such a thing, I'll put it down to your hormones again.

"Tell your teenagers that free trade is only free trade works when it works for grandpa and his crew"
Your statement makes no sense, and leads me to believe that maybe you omitted a word or just lost your thread owing to the red mist.

You carry on buying your golf shirts at bottom dollar, no matter where they come from and how old the machine operators are, or what conditions they work under.
With all the money you save, you can carry on educating your young until they're in their forties for all I care.
I'll carry on looking after the people that matter to me in my own sweet way, where I can and when I can.

What I stated earlier was what at least the vast majority of parents would say.
I just can't understand why you would find it so outrageous.

Do consider anger management, old boy. For your own sake.

0 Replies

@Robert Gentel,

Oh, I'm not judging others on the decisions they make. I'm merely stating what I've found works best for me.

I like Krugman, but I disagree with him on this point. He's undoubtedly correct that the economic effects of paying slave wages to these people in third-world countries do benefit the countries and poor people themselves somewhat. But that's just trading a shitty situation for a slightly less shitty situation, while patting ourselves on the back for doing so, with no real plan to transition these people to a not-shitty situation. No thanks.

When I buy a wrought iron bench from the guy I know here in Berkeley (as I did last month), I know that money is going to support someone I care about. He's going to spend at least some of that money locally on other people I care about. It's not wrong for me to care about people I know more than people I don't know.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

If someone says "I care more about those near me than poorer people far from me" that is a very different case than purporting to care about the kids and then advocating taking their jobs without providing any alternative (you knock the jobs as providing no plan for the future but that is a hell of a lot more than anyone who wants to take them away is providing and this kind of labor can bring countries out of such poverty and give them a better chance to develop).

I personally think that people would be better off thinking more global than that but it's at least not duplicitous and at some level I think tribalism is a good thing (the use of kids in earlier examples is powerful mainly because it helps underline that point).

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

you knock the jobs as providing no plan for the future but that is a hell of a lot more than anyone who wants to take them away is providing and this kind of labor can bring countries out of such poverty and give them a better chance to develop

Well, that's a good point. I would ask: are there any really successful examples of this happening? I feel like it's an underpants Gnomes situation; at what point does the country's economy develop, that the people who are working hard get health care? That they stop polluting endlessly? How do their economies transition from ones who make money - and make tremendous amounts of money for an extreme few, btw - off of this cheap and dirty labor, to more egalitarian economies that enjoy the standards of living that we do today?

It seems to me that the only advantage these countries has is their callous disregard for the environment and for human decency. If they get better in any way, they lose those advantages and their products are less competitive on the international markets. So why should they do so? I feel there is a critical step missing here.

I agree about the 'kids' point, it's not material to the conversation.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

If my making that decision helps to keep one American worker employed so that s/he can buy socks from China (as per the video) doesn't that, in turn, help the Chinese economy too?

Not in normal times, when interest rates aren't at the zero-bound and any purchasing decision you make will be offset by the Fed's monetary policy. But even in non-normal times like today, your decision isn't making the world a better place. It's making America a better place by increasing employment here, at the cost of making China a worse place by decreasing employment there.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

boomerang wrote:
If my making that decision helps to keep one American worker employed so that s/he can buy socks from China (as per the video) doesn't that, in turn, help the Chinese economy too?

Not in normal times, when interest rates aren't at the zero-bound and any purchasing decision you make will be offset by the Fed's monetary policy. But even in non-normal times like today, your decision isn't making the world a better place. It's making America a better place by increasing employment here, at the cost of making China a worse place by decreasing employment there.

Let's look at the argument from an environmental angle. If more and more people realize that buying cheap crap is bad for the environment, and the demand for cheap crap dries up, does that not in fact make the world a better place as well?

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

He's undoubtedly correct that the economic effects of paying slave wages to these people in third-world countries do benefit the countries and poor people themselves somewhat. But that's just trading a shitty situation for a slightly less shitty situation, while patting ourselves on the back for doing so, with no real plan to transition these people to a not-shitty situation.

. . . and your alternative is to buy American, which denies those people any improvement at all? Also, the boost isn't so little: From Taiwan to South Korea to Singapoore to Hong Kong, all successful modern transitions from Third-World poverty into First-World affluence have involved export-led expansions.

As things stand today, my moral choice is between helping American workers send their kids to college and Indian workers not sell their children into prostitution. Sorry, American workers, you lose.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

There are poor people in America and they too sell their children into prostitution. Should we not care equally about them?

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Let's look at the argument from an environmental angle. If more and more people realize that buying cheap crap is bad for the environment, and the demand for cheap crap dries up, does that not in fact make the world a better place as well?

First of all, you're assuming that the USA is examplary when it comes to the environment. It's not. From Sulfure Dioxide to CO2, European emissions per unit of GDP are about half what they are in America. Does that mean to you that buying European imports is even better than buying American? If not, your talk about the environment is just a fig leaf for economic nationalism.

Second of all, you talk about "the" environment as if there was only one. That works for CO2 emissions and a few others, but most pollutants don't travel all that far. Hence, Chinese pollution overwhelmingly stays in China, Indian pollution in India, Mexican pollution in Mexico, and so forth. This means the trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection is mostly an internal affair of those countries, not an international affair that the US has any standing to reign in on.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

There are poor people in America and they too sell their children into prostitution. Should we not care equally about them?

I think we should care about them equally, worker for worker and child for child. But given that the average Chinese or Indian already makes only one-tenth what the average American makes, child poverty there is one or two orders of magnitude greater than it is in America. So if we treat every individual's poverty equally, that creates a huge preference in favor of spending our money in India, China, and Mexico.

0 Replies

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
Let's look at the argument from an environmental angle. If more and more people realize that buying cheap crap is bad for the environment, and the demand for cheap crap dries up, does that not in fact make the world a better place as well?

First of all, you're assuming that the USA is examplary when it comes to the environment. It's not. From Sulfure Dioxide to CO2, European emissions per unit of GDP are about half what they are in America. Does that mean to you that buying European imports is even better than buying American? If not, your talk about the environment is just a fig leaf for economic nationalism.

From an environmental angle, it sure does! But, frankly; I haven't noticed that all that many products available here are actually made in Europe, as compared to 3rd-world countries and China. Probably not enough room on the shelf because of all the plastic crap that's there.

Quote:

Second of all, you talk about "the" environment as if there was only one. That works for CO2 emissions and a few others, but most pollutants don't travel all that far. Hence, Chinese pollution overwhelmingly stays in China, Indian pollution in India, Mexican pollution in Mexico, and so forth. This means the trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection is mostly an internal affair of those countries, not an international affair that the US has any standing to reign in on.

Sure, but do I have to support ******* up the environment on the other side of the planet? Nope. Not even if it helps lift people from a shitty situation to a slightly less shitty one.

I'm sure if we got rid of our environmental regulations here, we could have higher employment and less poverty here, as well. But I'll never support such a policy. Why would I support it in someone else's country? Isn't that the same as saying you essentially don't give a **** how bad their environment gets?

Thomas wrote:

boomerang wrote:
There are poor people in America and they too sell their children into prostitution. Should we not care equally about them?

I think we should care about them equally, worker for worker and child for child. But given that the average Chinese or Indian already makes only one-tenth what the average American makes, child poverty there is one or two orders of magnitude greater than it is in America. So if we treat every individual's poverty equally, that creates a huge preference in favor of spending our money in India, China, and Mexico.

Well, heck; IS the measure of where we should be spending our consumer dollars, the question of 'which product helps the most and poorest people?' I think that some here are sorta taking that as a given, but I strongly disagree that it is a given.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

Buying exclusively American ( if it were even possible) would simply perpetuate the reasons why American made products are not competitive with foreign imports.

All things being roughly equal, I will buy American, but I won't buy an inferior and over priced product simply because it was made in America.

I also won't buy an inferior product simply because it means jobs for kids in a sweatshop in Laos.

Stick with what makes economic sense and it will generally be beneficial to the widest group (including yourself)...and you won't need to invoke Paul Krugman to justify your bargain hunting at Walmart.

1 Reply

I think Robert cited Krugman because what he writes makes economic sense, not as an alternative to making economic sense. (Obviously I can't speak for Robert. Just saying.)

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Sure, but do I have to support ******* up the environment on the other side of the planet? Nope. Not even if it helps lift people from a shitty situation to a slightly less shitty one.

No you don't have to. But since it's their environment and their economic development, why not let them choose the tradeoff between the two that seems optimal to them, and simply accept it?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Well, heck; IS the measure of where we should be spending our consumer dollars, the question of 'which product helps the most and poorest people?' I think that some here are sorta taking that as a given, but I strongly disagree that it is a given.

It seemed to be what Boomerang's question was assuming, and I merely answered her question. That said, yes I do prefer to treat every human's welfare equally, no matter which country they live in. If you'd rather be a nationalist and champion the American worker's welfare over the Indian worker's welfare, that's your choice. Just be clear that it is your choice, and drop those silly pretensions about caring for other nations' people.

3 Replies

@Thomas,

Good Lord, I was about about to defend

I think I'll wait and see if the madness passes.

0 Replies

@Thomas,

Quote:

No you don't have to. But since it's their environment and their economic development, why not let them choose the tradeoff between the two that seems optimal to them, and simply accept it?

Who in this case is them? I highly doubt that the average citizen of these countries is making an informed choice on these issues. Rather, poverty FORCES them to accept any situation which improves their current one, even if it's a little, even if it sucks for the environment and they know it. It's not like the people of poor countries are democratically voting to screw their environments; they are doing so b/c they have no choice but to do so, and I don't support that at all.

Quote:

Just be clear that it is your choice, and drop those silly pretensions about caring for other nations' people.

I DO care about them - but only so much as they are willing to care for themselves. It's not my moral duty to ensure that my shopping habits support raising anyone up out of poverty.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

But since it's their environment and their economic development, why not let them choose the tradeoff between the two that seems optimal to them, and simply accept it?

While it may be reasonable to view economies in a compartmetalized manner (ignoring the argument of an "unlevel" playing field), one cannot so easily ignore environmental concerns. While the relative poverty of children in Guatamala, for example, may be said to be no business of ours, nor their treatment if they do labor, an argument about environmental irresponsibilityis not so easily made. If Guatamala pollutes the air and water of the Gulf of Mexico, that can very well affect us in a negative manner. Additionally, the economic inequalities mean that many of the undocumented workers in the United States come from Guatamala, as well as other Latin American nations.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Who in this case is them? I highly doubt that the average citizen of these countries is making an informed choice on these issues.

Fine, go right ahead and doubt it! So what? India, China, and Mexico belong to the Indians, the Chinese, and the Mexicans. They don't need to prove to you that they're competent to make their own decisions, and they certainly don't need your approval for making them.

1 Reply

Americans: do you care if it was made in America?

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