Yup
 

My daughter is eight. When she was six she looked at me one day and said, "Daddy, is EVERYTHING made in China?" I said, "Why do you ask baby". Her response, "Well, everything, like my toys, clothes and stuff says, 'Made in China, Made in China".

She got it right at age six.

Yep, remember that from when I was a kid, too. I'm a little older now, and I don't expect ANYTHING I buy to last. Not even my tools. I use them gently and properly, but at some point they will break. Then I have to truck off and get a new one. It's like a black hole of Chinese *****, there's no escaping it.

Except in an old Porsche...;)

B&O has some parts made in China, I'm sure they have had for quite some time.

Still, absolutely nothing wrong with Chinese made electronics as long as they're made to the right standard. My Beolab Penta IIIs are still going after 13 years of high volume all-day playing. Never a single fault!

What about Hazet tools?

AMEN

Shyt quality nowadays

I figure it's so we buy same product on a regular basis to keep the "economy" going. caugh...bullshyit...

In the meantime, we're filling the landfill.

Moral of the story? Spend more per product, buy less later.

Still is not a guarantee nowadays though.. :( But if you can afford a bit more for a great product, it's way cheeper in the longrun, for your pocket and the landfill...

If it's designed in the US and manufactured in China, and it's a POS, who does one blame? There's a difference. Shoddy specs are the responsibility of the designer. Shoddy manufacturing is the responsibility of both since they have shared responsibilities in producing the item as designed.

When hazardous materials are the issue, the manufacturer, w/o the designer's knowledge, either substitutes an alternate material instead of the spec'd material or the designer doesn't specify the necessary specifications. Unfortunately, designers/importers must now repeat a QC step to ensure product elements aren't hazardous, especially with toys and other consumer products. It's an added cost ultimately paid for by the consumer. No complaint on my part even though I enjoy lower prices like anyone else.

While there are several thousand items produced in China, a blanket condemnation of Chinese-made products isn't fair to those made to a good/high quality. The same can be said of most countries that produce products for US consumption.

Sherwood
(no affiliation)

Beginning today, Jan 1, Trader Joe's will stop carrying stuff from China.

Global Free TradeTM rocks! We export jobs and technology and import all our crap from China and Mexico. :)

Of course, CEOs have done an excellent job of convincing the American public that they shouldn't pay a premium for something built in the US of A and you can live better and have more by buying things built in the Far East.I, for one, would pay a premium for a television built by Americans. I remember the old brand names....Motorola, Philco, RCA, Zenith, and many others. Built like tanks.

I bought 2 pairs of Born shoes that i thought were Swedish to find the "Made in China" sticker on the box...

I've read that 50% of the world's consumer goods are manufactured in China. That's an amazing statistic if true. I wonder what that percentage would be if you looked at all of asia, as Japan is still a large manufacturing base, and places like Thailand, Viet Nam, and the rest of SE Asia must make up a decent percentage, too.

Ultimately, we as consumers decided this. People had a choice between quantity and quality, and the market always goes with quantity. People are always after the cheapest possible price, and this is the natural result.

Y'now, I was going to start a thread on isolationism, which has become the four lettered word of the millenia, and this would be one of the sub-topics. I am so against the deluge of foriegn crap. You can blame designers and you can blame manufacturing, and you can even blame us for being cheap, but the real blame lies much farther up the food chain. Look to a (relative) handful of very rich people and the politicians (pretty much all of them) they own. They have done a heck of a job convincing otherwise intelligent people, many of whom participate in this forum, that "free trade" is a great thing. Then, to add insult to injury, we are labeled "isolationists" if we want anything done about something that is clearly a problem. This is not "free trade". It is an imbalance. Free trade is not competing against an opponant who's people live in cardboard boxes and make $5 a week and isolationism is not simply wanting to level the playing field. Right now they are, or have, lifted tariffs on truck imports. The Japanese have been making trucks here because, with the tariffs, it was not cost effective to do so in their home country. Now guess what will happen? That's right - Korean manufacturers are already starting their ad blitz to get you into their cheap trucks. The Japanese will soon feel that pressure and, with the tariffs lifted, will do what everyone else has done - move operations to where they can compete. Where does that leave the big 3 who are already hobbled.

Now, you are no doubt thinking I'm seeing only one side of this story. I recognize that there are benefits to cheap Chinese goods that benefit us all. It creates competition in the sense that manufacturers need to get very efficient to compete. American cars were absolute garbage when the little Hondas showed up at the docks. Say what you will, American cars are a much improved product vs their foriegn counterparts today. We also benefit because we have more money left over from buying that cheap Korean truck to buy more cheap Chinese tools, which benefits retailers, which benefits us. We as consumers can load more *****ty plastic toys and battery operated jeeps into our backyards than ever before and there's a TV in every kitchen. We no doubt have "luxuries" that our grandparents never dreamed of. But, unlike them, do we have anything that will last? What will you hand down to your kids? What do you own that is cost effective to repair vs replace? Also, we are becoming a retail society instead of a manufacturing society. Which paycheck would you rather earn - retail or manufacturing? Of course other factors exist such as a booming construction industry building malls to house these retailers of Chinese crap. Don't get me started on the influx of Mexican labor! :)

I applaud the efforts of businesses like trader Joe's who refuse to carry Chinese goods. Starting today I will shop there. As mentioned (by someone who I completely disagree with) in another thread, Chinese food represents a tiny percent of food imports. However, my point is, it still amounts to billions of dollars of imports as well as opens the door for more imports. Factor in that they are notoriously slack in quality control, and you have a situation where, not only does it mess with our economy long term, but it poisons us short term! Until we straighten this out, get used to paying too much for cheap ***** that will, yes - excellent point - fill up our landfills.

Rant far from over:mad:

Glad it's not just me. It's sad, but when my daughter buys cheap toys with her allowance I've made it a habit of warning her not to expect her new toy to last very long.

A couple of years ago she was really in to The Incredibles. Friends and family all bought her Incredibles toys for her birthday. I swear that every single one broke within a few weeks of her birthday.

My nephew got a toy "guitar" for Christmas. Its built in amp quit on the 26th. His parents returned it and bought a "real" guitar from a music store. There's no chance this kid will ever learn to play as his new instrument won't stay in tune. Once it's as close to being tuned as it will get, chords sound terrible. I guess I don't need to mention that everything I discussed here came from China.

I remember going to a department store in Santa Monica in 1984 to buy a dress shirt. I told the young lady who was the sales clerk that if she could find a shirt made in the US that I would by it. She could not find one. Granted they were not all made in China but the majority were Asian. This is not new. I made do until I could get to Brooks Brothers for a USA made shirt. Now most of the Brooks Brothers shirts are made overseas.

Then you could spot the Taiwan, Malaysian and Chinese products because of inferior design or quality. Now with design either coming from outside or heavily influenced with years of experience even the quality is better.

I worked for a team in the late 70's sponsored by the guy who started the Style Auto line of jackets and clothing which some may remember. Cheep looking and cheaply made in Korea. The guy would send over to the Korean garment factory a sample jacket with the designs / logos he wanted safety pined onto the sample. Sometimes the idea was lost in the translation.

He wanted a red Ferrari jacket with the prancing horse logo along with Good Year and others on the back. Not having a good example of the logo he pined a piece of paper on the back with the words "Ferrari Logo" hand written across it. The picture below shows what he got back - 1000 of them. When I asked what he did with them without hesitation he said I'm selling them. That summer I saw one on a guy at a race track and couldn't resist asking him to pose for a picture. He had no idea.

Maybe this was a picture of where the US was heading. This was 30 years ago!


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199205378.jpg

Sounds like there is a market opportunity here. Someone needs to go out and identify well made products (from whatever region) and sell them at a premium. I just trashed my growing collection of modern telephones that don't work and finally bought a 20 year old rotary phone made by Northern Telecom. Aside from the fact that I like the retro look of the rotary dial and the wonderful sound of the BELL when it rings, I love the fact that it is built like the proverbial tank. You could pound nails with this beast. I plan to replace all of my cheap crap phones with 20 year old rotaries.

And as I get older and more affluent, I keep wondering where I can go to get high quality goods. I'm willing and able to pay a premium. But does anybody even market quality goods anymore? Where do rich people shop?

Yes you can escape it. Bang & Olufsen is still made in Denmark, where its always been produced.

Very good quality and while its expensive, I am still listening to the B&O stereo I purchased in 1989, so the cost per day/week/month/year is very good.

Its kinda like buying a nice watch that lasts you forever. You buy it once and keep it until you are tired of it, not because its broken.

Joe

Joe:

As Kathryn used to say:

"It isn't how much you pay for something, it is how often you have to pay it".

Or as John Beresford Tipton used to say:

"You get what you pay for."

As long as the sheeple are willing to believe the Wal-Mart mantra of how much you save and how much more you can buy, we will have crap.

It used to be "Made in Japan", now it's "Made in China".

My Dad has a wood sign on his desk that says, "Unemployment Office" and in small letters in the front corner, but very obvious, "Made in Japan". It was made in the USA as a joke, but reflected what people were thinking back then. He's had it at least 50 years now.

It's all crap. I pretty much treat everything as disposable these days. I got 2 years out of my iPod, and that was it. I never replaced it. If I get 3 years out of a laptop, I'm happy. My last digital camera lasted one year and four months. Luckily Costco still replaced it for free.

Costco's recent change of policy on returning electronics really sucks. They used to have a LIFETIME guarantee on everything! I bought all my electronics there. That was sweet, the digicam stops working after 3 years, you take it back and exchange it for a much better one, brand new, for free.

Too much abuse of the policy (people would return their still working 10 year old TVs, etc), though, and now it's only a 90 day Costco warranty on electronics.