Reason on why American athletes wearing Chinese-made uniforms at the Olympics is a good thing
“I’m so upset,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “Take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile, and burn them….We have people in the textile industry who are desperate for jobs.”
Here, Reid demonstrates economic cluelessness. It seems logical that Americans lose if American clothing is made overseas. But that’s nonsense. First, it’s no surprise the uniforms were made in China. Most clothing is. That’s fine. It saves money. We invest the savings in other things, like the machines that Chinese factories buy and the trucks that ship the Olympic uniforms.
The Cato Institute’s Daniel Ikenson’s adds: “We design clothing here. We brand clothing here. We market and retail clothing….Chinese athletes arrived in London by U.S.-made aircraft, trained on U.S.-designed and -engineered equipment, wear U.S.-designed and -engineered footwear, having perfected their skills using U.S.-created technology.” That’s free trade. Trade makes us richer.
Now see here, now you did it with that “richer” talk. We’re aren’t interested in ‘richer’ only ‘fairer’.
Soon Obama will shrink the labor force enough we will all be equally miserable — except for those selfless and yet so fabulous Lefties in Government who really do know how better to run our lives then we do. They are a little be more equal than us.
Dirty Harry wants us to wear $100 American shirts, or he wants American workers to get Chinese wages.
Which is it to be?
I recently watched the RiffTrax’d version of the Star Wars Holiday Special. Aside from being arguably the worst thing ever committed to film — Manos is Citizen Kane by comparison — the SWHS is interesting for the time-capsule aspect, with a variety of commercials from 1978.
You could actually feel the malaise oozing out of the TV.
Two that stood out: an ILGWU “Look for the Union Label” ad. Might as well have been the International Brotherhood of Buggy-Whip Workers, for all the good their efforts did, what with virtually all of our clothing now coming from China, Indonesia, Pakistan, and all sorts of other places that you wouldn’t want to live.
Another ad: some woman walks in front of a rack full of ugly late-’70s blazers (think “real estate agent”), and points to this ‘name-brand’ jacket for $300, and another just-as-good one for ‘only’ $89. I think it might have been a Woolite ad, not that it matters. The point is the pricing of both. This was a time when you could buy a brand new car for $4000. In today’s pricing, we’d be talking “$1500” for the expensive one (Michelle Obama territory!) and a mere $450 for the everyday working-woman version.
Which is insane. More power to the Chinese, Wal-Mart, and anyone else who’ve helped make it possible for us to have a closet full of perfectly fine clothing for the price of one good item in the ’70s world.
America is buried under a huge warm turd these days. And David Frum apparently wants to be the civil little toadstool growing out of that turd.
Frum needs somebody to love him.
I don’t see it happening.
“Don’t Frum want somebody to love,
Don’t Frum need somebody to love,
Wouldn’t Frum want somebody to love,
Frum better find somebody to loooove.”
>do know how better to run our lives then we do.
>*ruin
ftfy.