[quote=ltsdd]No difference than the complaints about manufacturing jobs going overseas and at the same time wanting everything to be cheap. It’s really a catch-22.
How much more are people willing to pay for products that are made here instead of in countries across the pacific?[/quote]Well, I’m not a big consumer and use my clothes, household and personal items for many years. However, I don’t care if the stuff I DO occasionally replace (jogging and exercise clothing and shoes, for example) is made in Taiwan or Bangladesh or the USA. If it meant more jobs for hundreds of thousands of idle American workers, then I would have no problem paying up to double for my running shoes.
I’ve been to some of these areas of the country with high unemployment and long-shuttered stores and strip malls, have seen it all multiple times with my own eyes and can tell you that it’s not pretty. It is often a “food desert” in these areas, as well, due to lack of choice (ie Family Dollar Store vs truck stop convenience store for what nearby food is actually available).
I totally sympathize with the people who have lived in these areas their entire lives and can’t easily relocate (family ties and prohibitive cost). I don’t feel it’s right that the factories which once provided the residents of these regions decent living wages have vanished to other countries, thereby enriching their foreign workers’ lives at the expense of American workers.
