So, its been a few days now and so far, so good. But I know I am going to come up against something soon that is going to force me to buy some thing that isn't made in this country. But if nothing else, I am at least growing more acutely aware of just how much is not made in this country any more.
The other day, I was coloring on the floor with my daughter and I had to look (seems I do that a lot these days.) Her Crayons were made in Mexico, and her Crayon Markers were made in China...... but, with American Ink........ well at least there is something I guess........ but then I thought, no......... there isn't something......... Lets analyze this production chain. Somewhere, here in American, they are collecting the raw materials for ink. They mix together the water and dyes they want to use, and then ship it, to China. Once there, the seemingly amazing Chinese, wrap it in crayola looking plastic, box it up, load it on a boat or a plane, and ship it all the way back here so I can buy it at Walmart. Really. Does anyone else think this is absolutely ridiculous? All that I hear about on the news is oil prices going up, and I pay over $3.00 a gallon for the past how many months, and all the while, copious amounts of fuel are wasted shipping these things all over the world, just so my daughter can paint pretty reds and blues across the color books that were also printed in China (no clue where the ink came from there) but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that we had to ship paper, or wood pulp over to China so they could make the paper to print our coloring books with. Seriously..... where did we go wrong.
And then, crayons from Mexico. Lets think about that one as well. I have seen how they make crayons. Your talking about a system that is so automated that other than loading machines with raw materials and quality control checks along the production line, there is very little need for a production force...... but someone some where figure out they could pay some one a 10th of what they were paying an american worker to load paper and wax into machines, so they moved production south of the boarder.
And we sit and wonder why unemployment in the country is so high. We don't even make our own crayons.
