Taking "Made in America" too far?

[frenchmon]

Here is why I don't really believe anything is really made 100% in America anymore. Here in ST. Louis there where two Chrysler automobile plaints. Just like GM, they needed the bail out money to stay afloat. So Americans gave their good hard earned money and bailed out the auto manufacturers. So what does Chrysler do? They closed those two plaints here in St. Louis, putting thosands of people out of work, and moved to Mexico! That was a dirty move....did not even have the fortitude to keep that plaint in the USA. Though Rogue claims they are American made...I betcha they are not 100% American parts.

We have Herron Audio here in St. Louis...very expensive high end amps and tube preamps and at one point made very good high end speakers. We also have Clayton Audio as well...high end amps as well....I will bet neither is 100% American.

[texlle]

Just because something is assembled in China should not detract from its build quality. If the collection of parts being assembled are manufactured in China, there could be cause for concern. These two concepts seem to run together all too often these days. My Jolida was assembled in China from a majority of components designed and built in MD. After 9 years, my amp has performed flawlessly, as have the rest of my stereo components.

Chinese manufactured parts are, on the whole, cheaply designed, hewn from cheap materials, easy to mass produce in great numbers, but are only effective enough to look good enough to sell. There's less forethought, no passion that goes into these products.

Chinese labor on the other hand yields far better results than Chinese manufacturing in terms of quality. If you're assembling a McIntosh amplifier, the individual pieces are made to exacting specifications, thus they should fit together precisely as they were intended to. Just follow the instructions. Any labor force can do this, no matter how much they're paid.

However, if it's a clock radio sold for $5.99 at the dollar store, the parts are cast or molded from crappy molds where each piece is slightly different from the last, thus assembly will be shoddy. Not to mention the cheaper metals and other raw materials as stated earlier. These factors give rise to the poorer quality products we see from the PRC.