By Daniel Nardini
Well, this extreme winter weather killed my car battery. I had a sneaking suspicion that my car battery was not performing well when it did not work even when it was not all that cold (about 35 F). When I was about to take my wife home from work, the battery simply did not work. Long story short, the company where my wife works helped me secure a new car battery, and one of their maintenance workers, a young man named Chris, installed the new car battery. The car roared back to life, and we were on our way back home. While he was installing the car battery, Chris told me that he was greatly disappointed with how things are made now. Car parts, according to him, are almost all imported and they do not last long. Even car batteries he has found are poorly made and do not last long as he has had to change car batteries in his own vehicle twice in a three to five year period. Before he started working where my wife is employed, he used to work in a car dealership. Towards the end, he said frankly, “I wished I had been born in your time instead of now.”
What he meant was he wished he had been born in the 1950’s and 1960’s when most products were made in the USA, and when it was possible to have a job usually for life and a nice home that could be paid for without a 30 plus year mortgage. When he had worked on the old vintage cars, he was impressed by the parts that were put into them, and how good the quality of all these parts were. I had explained to him that my father once worked for the famed TV company Zenith. All of the parts for the television sets had been sourced from trustworthy supply-chain companies, and these parts had been carefully checked when they went into the television sets. This was why the Zenith TV sets lasted for years well past their warranties. Likewise, everyday consumer goods from shavers to brushes to bicycles (for my younger audience, there was the famous Schwinn bicycles manufactured in Chicago which had been all the rage in my day) were all made in the USA which back then we took for granted.
Sadly, as corporations moved most or all of their operations out of the United States, the imports the average American consumer has received since then has gotten ever poorer in quality. Over the decades, too many of the major corporations have offered the American public poorer quality imports, and sadly this drove a lot of those companies who still manufactured in the United States out of business because they could not compete with the inferior knock-offs. Within the last five years, this trend has somewhat changed. More American corporations have moved their operations back to the United States; providing badly needed jobs with better pay with better benefits than service sector jobs can give. Even though this is a welcome trend, it is still in so many ways not enough. Many more American companies have left the United States for even cheaper Third World countries. Those who had factories in China have moved them to even cheaper places like Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, etc. While we hear of all the corporations returning to the USA as “re-shoring,” the many major American corporations now abandoning China is very much a mixed bag.
The real problem is that Americans are still getting stuck with poor quality consumer goods. It means that many small family-owned businesses will be stuck with parts and merchandise that leave a lot to be desired, and not put money into the U.S. economy. Whatever my time was it is long gone. For Chris it will mean a rough future. Unless America changes radically, I do not know what to say to Chris or for those in Generation Z who want to have a future as good as what his and their parents and grandparents had.
The Way Things Were, Again?
By Daniel Nardini
What he meant was he wished he had been born in the 1950’s and 1960’s when most products were made in the USA, and when it was possible to have a job usually for life and a nice home that could be paid for without a 30 plus year mortgage. When he had worked on the old vintage cars, he was impressed by the parts that were put into them, and how good the quality of all these parts were. I had explained to him that my father once worked for the famed TV company Zenith. All of the parts for the television sets had been sourced from trustworthy supply-chain companies, and these parts had been carefully checked when they went into the television sets. This was why the Zenith TV sets lasted for years well past their warranties. Likewise, everyday consumer goods from shavers to brushes to bicycles (for my younger audience, there was the famous Schwinn bicycles manufactured in Chicago which had been all the rage in my day) were all made in the USA which back then we took for granted.
Sadly, as corporations moved most or all of their operations out of the United States, the imports the average American consumer has received since then has gotten ever poorer in quality. Over the decades, too many of the major corporations have offered the American public poorer quality imports, and sadly this drove a lot of those companies who still manufactured in the United States out of business because they could not compete with the inferior knock-offs. Within the last five years, this trend has somewhat changed. More American corporations have moved their operations back to the United States; providing badly needed jobs with better pay with better benefits than service sector jobs can give. Even though this is a welcome trend, it is still in so many ways not enough. Many more American companies have left the United States for even cheaper Third World countries. Those who had factories in China have moved them to even cheaper places like Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, etc. While we hear of all the corporations returning to the USA as “re-shoring,” the many major American corporations now abandoning China is very much a mixed bag.
The real problem is that Americans are still getting stuck with poor quality consumer goods. It means that many small family-owned businesses will be stuck with parts and merchandise that leave a lot to be desired, and not put money into the U.S. economy. Whatever my time was it is long gone. For Chris it will mean a rough future. Unless America changes radically, I do not know what to say to Chris or for those in Generation Z who want to have a future as good as what his and their parents and grandparents had.