Fmeh

In the 80's, everyone, especially conservatives, were always saying, "Buy American! Buy American!", almost to the point of looking like fanatics.

What specifically was it that made them all flip to the mindset of "Buy things, because cheap prices are part of living in a free market!"--and you just don't hear them saying "Buy American!" anymore because you really can't buy everything American anymore. Food, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and airplanes. Yeay. Why is the idea of buying American-made products the LEAST important thing to them now? It's as if they don't want things to be made here anymore. Could this be true? I doubt it.

To me, this is the most significant position flip that the republicans AND the conservatives have made in the past 25 years. It's quite frankly a night and day difference in mindset. I don't get how some of these same people can claim that they like the Reagan years when those years were STILL all about BUYING AMERICAN.

__________________

JenK

I don't think it's just the republicans. It's just most noticeable from them because they were so noisy about it before. Free trade means that their corporate backers are now making more money by manufacturing overseas. I think it's as simple as that. The money is overseas. If you say "Buy American" it looks like you're anti-corporate because only the little guy is manufacturing in American anymore.

__________________
"All sorrows are less with bread." ~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Richie Waves

Played like a fiddle.

__________________
My lastfm

Oooh, Betty! the cat did a shit in the hat

Beebo Brink

Yeah, it's really strange that it's now some kind of "flaming liberal" flag to hate Walmart for flooding our market with cheap overseas imports.

I'm not saying this IS a liberal vs. conservative issue, but that seems to be a popular perspective in my area. Most of my conservative acquaintances scorn my boycott and make snide comments about it. Since when did it become a matter of ridicule to support local business and promote American-based products (what few of them are left)?

__________________

Dnate Mars

Um... The unions had a big part in the "Buy American" campaign.

__________________
SLU Clubhouse - Open 24/7
Visit at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tan/138/25/25

Beezle Warburton

For some reason American Flag stickers on import cars bug me.

__________________

Beau Perkins

We are in debt and dont have the money to pay back. So the governement give the soul instead.

__________________

Bams

I haven't been around enough to have a clue what you're talking about in the 80s, but I try to buy American whenever I can. It's not about cost really, it's just about I like to provide people that live in my area with jobs by supporting the companies that employ them.

I disagree with our (Americas) practice of shipping jobs to other countries and exploiting them by giving them jobs that should rightly belong to the people in the country they do business in.... all the while paying those other countries considerably less than they would be required to pay here in the US, all so they can increase their profit margin and drive more expensive cars, buy bigger houses, and go on kicking the middle class in the face with their behavior.

Fmeh

You don't remember conservative neighbors and friends hounding you about buying American in the 80's? It was everywhere over here, and back then it was the LIBERALS who were the ones saying "What's the big deal if it's made in China?"

I guess I should be questioning the liberals on this too--they flipflopped on this radically as well.

In the 80's, the conservatives in their opinion about job outsourcing (which didn't have that term at that time) seemed like a bunch of extremists running around saying "the sky is falling", but now we have exactly the situation they had warned us about, and now they support it and the ones who were saying it's not a big deal are the ones saying, "We have to save our jobs! We have to cut back on job oursourcing! We have to buy American!"

Richie Waves

If you Americans would just accept freaking Sweatshop conditions and pay youse wouldn't be in this mess now would yee?

Bradley Bracken

What made conservatives believe in small government that stayed out of our lives but now want to tell us who we can marry?

Sorry to hijack the thread. It's a hot spot for me. Everyone back to the topic at hand.

__________________
I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them.
George W. Bush

Fmeh

If the CEO's weren't demanding so much pay, if the higher-ups in general weren't demanding so much pay (a maximum wage law based on percentages of the workers at that company would take care of this pretty quickly), if minimum wage was changed to a per county basis so that no matter where you live, minimum wage in your county will pay you enough to get your bare essentials (a crappy apartment and food), if more states did things like in Arizona so companies can't hire illegal workers anymore, and if outsourcing more than 10% of a company's workforce became illegal, I'm sure we'd have LOTS of jobs, also probably lots of crappy jobs, but at least people could have their bare essentials without having to receive government handouts to survive.

Bams

What should really be bothering us is that important things like US passports and such being made overseas. I was watching CNN last night where they talked about a huge batch of bad drugs that came from China and killed a whole bunch of people here..... but there's been no discussion of a recall and no one is doing much more than standing around saying... wtf.

The truth is that corporations have quietly assumed control over the system. The toys and tinkerings that we cannot live without are the same things that are quickly sending us down the dark rabbit hole.

They were all about BUY AMERICAN when they were making money selling American but once they realized they could save a shitload of money that would ultimately go into their pockets, then it didn't matter so much where the stuff was made, and the jobs that were lost when those factories closed and moved overseas was touted as being jobs Americans wouldn't want anyway and so on.

The entire situation is shameful and buying cheap toilet paper from Walmart isn't worth the ramifications. I fear it might be too late to do much about it though.

Richie Waves

FISA, Homeland security, "Patriot" act... Small government my arse.

Ron Paul is a conservative.

Fmeh

Well, to be fair, there used to be forced prayer in schools and it wasn't liberals who put "In God We Trust" onto our currency in the McCarthyism era nor in the late 1800's. It wasn't conservatives who pushed for women's rights and it wasn't conservatives who pushed to end slavery. So their track record as far as butting into people's personal lives hasn't exactly been very good. They've never seemed to mind the idea of having church and state be buddy-buddy with each other.

But on the issue of being good to small businesses, supporting the little guy, being against the idea of losing jobs, being against the idea of buying things that are made in other countries, conservatives have made done a complete 180.

Richie Waves

I could be wrong in me old history here, but wasn't the republican party founded on anti slavery issues? and by anti slavery folk..

I'm too lazy to double check that.

Fmeh

Hey, I could be wrong.

Victoria Kemsley

First off, let me say I buy as little as possible in Walmart, but I'm still mad about them censoring music back in the 90''s.

However not to long ago the TV in my bedroom went out. Living in a small town, I have 2 choices, Walmart and 1 small mom and pop style appliance store. I priced tv's in both places, and thier was almost a $400 differance in prices for similar models. If the differance would have been say $100 or less, I would have gave my money to the local store, but hell, $400??

Coffee right now at the locally owned grocery stores is almost $10 ...Walmart $5.99

Walmart is just plain evil, but with price differances like that, it's hard not to patronize them

Victoria Kemsley

Democratic party was centered in the south, republicans iin the north, they did a flip flop on values around the post WWII period.

Fmeh

So, prior to McCarthyism, the republicans were actually for change instead of trying to "bring back the good 'ol days"? I need to do some reading...... I'm feeling rather uneducated at this time--I had the happenings of the past right, but I guess had some of the labels wrong....

Richie Waves

The Anti-Slavery Party « Wolf Pangloss

Bams

Agreed it's hard to spend that kind of money on something when you know it doesn't have to be that way. Like Fmeh said above...

The bottom line in this country is greed rules over all. We have been told that you to can have the American dream and be a rockstar and live like you have endless amounts of money, but we do nothing to balance out the lopsided economy, instead allowing the government to continue to throw our tax dollars that banks and other investors who made bad choices. Until the country gets a handle on it's priorities, we are in for more of the same and the downward spiral will continue.

Victoria Kemsley

Not quite that simple, the Republican party has almost always been the party of business, and in the 1800's were the driving force behind expanding industry, railroads etc.

The sharp divergence in social issues I would say started during the depression, and was cemeted post war.

Dnate Mars

I never realized that boycotting Wal*Mart was a "flaming liberal" idea. I guess I am just strange because I hate Wal*Mart's business practices, so I don't shop there.

Anyways, buying American is not a conservative or liberal idea.

Dnate Mars

Are you confusing conservatives with Republicans?

And FYI, in the 80s, I was just a little kid