Originally Posted By: 73Bruin
Originally Posted By: renov8r
The perhaps unintended consquences of using legislation and collective bargaining to bolster the "rights" of American laborers has been to so severaly curtail the employment of such workers as to render them nearly extinct.


Sounds like you would prefer going back to the pre-1863 set of labor laws that this country used to have. You might also prefer living in a third world country.


Neither. I think that the specializations that suit countries where low skill labor is the predominate form of industrialization are no longer suited to the US. The consequences of fewer people being involved in such employment in this country ought to be that more folks take on the greater value-add functions. To some extent this is true -- firms like Outlaw require people saavy in audio design, consumer marketing / communication (maybe they need to beef up that function),technical support and other areas that do not lend themselves to "line workers".

Yes, I am well aquainted with the arguement "every country needs some garbage collectors" but I simply reject extending that to say "every country ought to have a functioning high-value consumer electronics assembly business". For a whole multitude of reasons that seems unrealistic.

I might conceded that low volume /high cost audio firms have employees with skills similar enough to those working for proto-type shops / defense contractors, and in some stretched sense are conceivably part of the broad "strategic work force", though I have not really found that arguement to be convincng from the whole "I don't want my stuff made in some country trying to bury us" set.

Perhaps if the economics pressures that have presented themselves to the global economy result in more US workers being prepared to accept the conditions that exist in overseas factories the ability for high value firms to find a US workforce to fufill the "Made In Amercia" pleas of some will materialize.


I suppose the continued growth of wealthier workers in far away lands may also dampen their competitive edge.

From a global competitive standard point I suspect that the elite in China are probably already importing McIntosh electronics to show off their wealth. I wonder how that will work out...