You Can Buy American

[kevin_standlee]

My thanks to gridlore for pointing at this article:

Can the 'All American Store' Reverse Our Nation's Walmartization

There are a couple of big-box stores here in Fernley: Wal-Mart and Lowe's. I don't shop at Wal-Mart. I'm stuck with Lowe's, because the nearest alternatives are 25-30 miles away, and it doesn't always make sense to make those drives.

Note that what Lisa and I really want is for the USA to require that imported goods meet the same environmental standards (or better) than US-made equivalents. If making it would be illegal in the USA, it should be illegal to sell it here, too. Thus most Canadian and European-made stuff would be fine, since they're apt to have the same or higher standards.

I hope this store gets some success and that they decide to try and franchise it. If there was one here in Fernley, we'd shop there, even if it cost more. What's the point of buying cheap junk if it just breaks on you. The article itself says:

Selling low-quality goods at low prices, a big-box retailer can assume products it sells will break with some regularity. Perversely, this creates repeat business, as consumers file back into the store to buy replacements. Lather, rinse, and repeat!

Comments

[howeird]

I see, good points. Though I would suggest that predatory trade practices have already done most of the damage they can do. At this point taxing Chinese imports up the wazoo is probably the only way to reverse the trend - with the irony being that when this was done with the Japanese auto industry, the Japanese started building many of their US-bound cars in the USA. The $$ still goes to the banks in Dubai. :-(

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

But of course the Japanese-owned plants in the U.S. are non-union, and have shitty benefits and wages by the standards of American industrial employment (but good by rural Southern desperation standards).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a conundrum, just like how the people employed by the Wal-Mart and Lowe's in Fernley are happy to have jobs, even though the presence of those big box stores destroyed most of the small downtown stores. (I know I'd much rather have a small hardware store within walking distance over a Big Box that's basically inaccessible except by car, even though the former would have a smaller selection and cost more.)