Made in America

Recommended reading: "The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman. Global competition is a reality that isn't going away. I lead a product development group in a manufacturing plant. I have to work hard every day to maintain a competitive edge, stay profitable and keep customers from switching to overseas producers. I use my stereo to come home and unwind when I can get the chance. We use overseas suppliers ourselves. I don't always agree with it, but it is over my head. I have been in cities in the US that straddle state lines and seen incredible differences in prosperity on one side vs. the other. So I know government has a huge impact on the economy. Not just at the federal level, but at the state level too. I'm convinced too many of our government leaders play to the lobbyists funded by special interest groups and big business. It is frustrating to me to see CEOs making thousands of times their workers' average salaries (in the 60s CEOs made about 30x their average workers' pay) and yet they will close a US plant and ship the work overseas to gain a 1-2% margin. In the end, those companies still fail. Look at how many big corporations these days have let their CEOs earn more than the companies themselves earn. It is crazy. They dismiss their talent and then run the company into the ground trying to cut costs by shipping manufacturing out of the country. (I am sensitive to this because it has happened to me in the past.) We need government leaders to stand up and put communities first and jobs first.

Pgawan, it is a much more complex issue than consumer demand. The market sets the prices for products. Companies then make the decision to produce those products based on profitability and capital investment. (It takes money to make money). Just a few years ago, I was paying $89/month for cable but now it costs me $140/month for the same level of service. I am not happy about that at all; but I have not found a suitable, cheaper alternative. This cable outfit is making a ton of money for their investors and they reward their CEO handsomely for it. The market dictates the prices and companies must find ways to produce and make a profit. The point is, most of our mainstream products are produced by large global companies. These companies have resources the world over and the decision to invest in this country or that is based largely on profitability. What you did for me yesterday doesn't matter. Its all about what can you do for me today. Senior level management is filled with egocentric people. That is a reality. They likely, generally speaking, have failed marriages and/or fractured family lives. These same management teams also fail to maintain relationships with their direct employees that produce their products. Being egocentric, they tend to severe those relationships and move on. They cannot break those paradigms just as much as sometimes older manufacturing plants are not able to break old paradigms and move on. A good example is a certain tire plant in the midwest a couple of decades ago. It was a US owned plant. Quality was poor, productivity was poor and the plant was loosing money. The management closed the plant and sold it. They said that they had no other options. They blamed the workers for all of the issues. A foreign firm bought the plant and rehired the same workers. They invested money into the plant and it became a top producer with excellent quality and profitability. The only change was the management team. Is that the case every time? No, of course not, but it is more often than not. The relationship between senior management and their manufacturing plants is just like a marriage. Both sides have to work at it and let go of the baggage. Egocentric management teams, however, tend to fold up the game board and go home when things do not go their way. Start a new relationship in a new location and lay down their egocentric rules. It works for a while until that new plant becomes restless and tired of the onesided relationship. If you follow the news at all, you have seen this played out over and over again.
Yes, enthusiasts will pay outrageous amounts of money for nearly anything from cables to speakers and amps. There is a market for high end equipment and none of us can really guess at the motivation of the leadership of these high end US companies. Maybe they love this hobby too and they keep their manufacturing close at hand so they have more control over it and the day to day operations. Maybe they feel a sense of duty to their local community. Maybe, if they had the capital and market growth potential, they would invest in a plant overseas to generate maximum profits.

Using cable service was a bad example on my part. I was trying to make a point about how market drives pricing, but cable, like health care is a service not a product and they do not face global competition like the manufacturing industry.
From a consumer standpoint global competition is a good thing. I am all for it. The point I was making is that the system is unbalanced or unfair at times. What I have learned over the years in industry is that if you or the company performs poorly, then eventually you and/or the company goes under; but the converse is not always true. If you perform well and the company performs well; you may still loose your job. Success is no guarantee.
Here is how global competition has been good to us as consumers. The government's CPI has some funky calculations so I reference things to the price of a gallon of gasoline. (Price based on my region over the years.) I will use a television set since they have been in production for several decades. I recall that my dad bought our first 25" color TV in late 1968 for $400. That was a SOTA TV and a lot of money. $400 back then bought about 1800 gallons of gasoline. Today, consider a 60" 3D HDTV as SOTA. It costs the equivalent of about 788 gallons of gasoline. Quite the reduction in cost over the years thanks to technology, productivity improvements and competition. How about USA made high end gear? I will use my favorite preamps for an example. The ARC SP-15 top of the line preamp cost the equivalent of about 4500 gallons of gasoline in the early nineties. Today, their top end Ref 5 costs about 3800 gallons of gasoline. So maybe global competition has been good for the hifi market as well. Maybe, if I compared the 40th Anniversary edition to the SP-15 it would not look so favorable, but I'm not sure that is apples to apples.
Now, look at the service industry which apparently has no global competition. I can recall my cable bill was $20/month in 1989. That is because at that time the bill increased 10% per year and I made up my mind that when it hit $20/month I would cancel. (I would dance in streets today for a bill like that.) So that was equivalent to about 16 gallons of gasoline per month. I still have basic cable and if I back out the internet service and just look at cable, it costs me 27 gallons of gasoline today. That is an 11 gallons of gasoline per month increase! For the same basic service! How about healthcare? I was paying $22/month for healthcare in 1990 when my oldest son was born. btw- It was an HMO and his birth cost me $10 out of pocket. I miss those days. So in 1990, my healthcare insurance cost was about 18 gallons of gasoline per month. Sure, I have changed companies over the years, but I have been with the same company now for quite a while and have still seen big year over year increases. So much so that today my healthcare insurance costs me a whopping 100 gallons of gasoline per month! That is a 455% increase in gallons of gasoline over 22 years! Yikes!