Made in China

NPR had a story this morning about a family that didn't buy anything that said "made in China" on it for a year. They set the bar pretty low as far as checking if something was made in China. They still had a pretty hard time finding things. She said that they ended up not buying a bunch of things that they just couldn't find.

I've heard people threaten to do this. But, everything is made in China. That is how it seems pretty often. Another story on NPR spoke of people trying to sue the companies in the U. S. that were involved in the pet food poisoning a couple of months ago. They were all suing Wal-Mart and other distributors. A couple of lawyers were going through the motions of suing the Chinese company, but the guy they interviewed said he found no evidence of any one in the U. S. ever getting a dime from a Chinese company that had no presence in this country.

I remember reading somewhere that the only difference between one day contacts and three week contacts was the amount of insurance the companies bought to protect themselves from liability. The contacts roll off the same assembly line. I can't prove this, that is just more hearsay.

If Chinese companies are more or less immune from U. S. lawsuits, Is this a big part of why the products are so cheap? Should we in the U. S. take note of the cost of companies forced to protect themselves from lawsuits and, naturally, passing the cost on to their consumers? Perhaps the U. S. government should impose import tariffs on Chinese products to cover losses incurred by U. S. citizens. I may have to write my representative on that one.

The only thing I might think twice about is the fact that if such a tariff happened heads would quite literally roll. In fact, they already have. One official was put to death after a couple of infractions including the pet food scandal and taking bribes to look the other way many years ago. I wonder what the guy who took his place thinks about that. I would not like to be in that position. That's not what I think of when I complain a bout dead end jobs.