I've lost the battle my friends

[DocCarbon]

Can one imagine what our economy would look like ,had we shifted textiles to South America as they once were ,instead of China . I can recall several years back people bitching about what shirts would cost ,if they were to be made here instead of China . Really ??, so what do they cost now and more importantly at the expense of whom !.

 

[urbanrifleman]

Can one imagine what our economy would look like ,had we shifted textiles to South America as they once were ,instead of China . I can recall several years back people bitching about what shirts would cost ,if they were to be made here instead of China . Really ??, so what do they cost now and more importantly at the expense of whom !.

Oh, I really want to get on my soapbox with my calculator... but I have sworn off having any real meaningful non shooting conversations on this forum.

 

[Hondo64d]

To all my current and potential customers,

This announcement pains me beyond words as I have put so much effort into this project over the last five plus years. The time has come where it is no longer feasible for me to continue to manufacture the MRB Annealer. It is simply not possible for me to compete against the people who choose to have their products manufactured in communist China or other third world countries. I am a proud American who fully understands how lucky I am to live in this country and enjoy the freedoms it offers. I will not, under any circumstance, sell out my country or my fellow Patriots for the sake of profit.

As long as we the people of this country continue to allow the installation of socialist / global agenda driven people with their ill-informed and miss-guided mindset into positions of power like the ones we are suffering under now we are most assuredly doomed. The road we are headed down now is unsustainable and ends at the edge of a cliff, a very high cliff, and once we fall, and we will fall, we will not survive the impact at the bottom of the abyss and America as we now know it will be lost forever.

I ask that anyone who has come to visit my site contemplating the purchase of my machine to please lend your support to any of my competitors who build their machines in our country. They need and would appreciate your business as I know they are struggling like I have. I will continue to provide support to anyone who owns one of my machines for as long as I am able. I am seventy-four now so I'm sure I don't have as much say in that matter as I used to. I fought as hard as I could for long as I could so I reckon it’s time to go sit on the porch stitch up my wounds.

Be a proud American, support your fellow citizens and whenever possible buy American!

God Bless America,
Mike

Very sorry to hear you’re stopping production Mike. When I was trying to decide which annealer to buy, I thought yours offered the most for the least. I like it so well that I see no need to even investigate the newcomers, and I recommend the MRB any time someone ask me about annealers.

John

 

[Deleted Dewey]

The option, especially for the rabid anti-"Chi-com", is to do without.

 

[Deleted Dewey]

No its COMMUNISM!

So competition is communism, and government subsidies for businesses that could not otherwise compete is capitalism?

Got it.

 

[outasite`08]

I see why these threads get the lock a roo. Sorry Mike you had to get all this BS. Good luck. Jeff

 

[FNSafari]

So cheaper labor is communism, and government subsidies for businesses that could not otherwise compete is capitalism?

Got it.

No China cheap labor is Communism..got it?

 

[CharlieNC]

Politicians, the Clinton administration, passed NAFTA and free trade laws that enabled corps to offshore production. Without the politicians selling out the US of A it would never have happened. And these are the same people of the same party that touts itself as the champion of the working man. BS! Corps championed the idea.

Remember what Ross Perot said about it when he was running for president????

Exactly!!!! I worked in the textile industry since 1973 and it was the second largest contibutor to GDP, second to the aerospace/defense conglomorate funded by the government. Now little of it survives as Perot forecasted due to the initial major lobbying funding by WalMart. Around that time Pat Buchannan wrote a book titled something like "The Rise And Fall of the US." One of the chapters dealt with regulating foreign trade as a major thrust of the founding fathers in terms of tarrifs and quotas in order to protect US jobs, and security against dependence of critical goods from foreign nations. We cannot compete with commodity goods produced by low labor and regulatory costs, which result in lower paying jobs and federal subsidies here. China could cripple us if they cut off the supply of critical intermediate chemicals used to manufacture pharmaceuticals, and many other products. Like the Fram mechanic used to say " you can pay me now or you can pay me later".

 

[marchx]

@magic mike People suffer from a disease called short-termism. They do not reflect on wider consequences of choices they make.

 

[INTJ]

I am about a pro-American as one can get. I proudly served as a USAF pilot for 24 years.

I always look to local or USA made first and am even willing to pay a little more to get something that is made in the USA. I won't however spend a LOT more, and I absolutely won't accept lesser quality.

So I like my annealer from Australia, my powder from Australia and Canada, my brass from Finland, my biggest bolt gun from the Czech Republic, my glass from Germany, and my press from Germany.

Except for my big bolt gun, ALL my other bolt rifles are USA made. Most are Winchester, but then again my favorite shotgun was made in Belgium and my favorite lever gun was made in Japan.

So if an American company wants me to buy their stuff, they need to make it better or almost as inexpensive as what foreign companies make. And yes, both of my vehicles were made in the USA.

Also, I imagine I am a lot more aligned with Australian annealer companies, Canadian powder companies, German reloading press companies, and Czech rifle makers than I am half of the population of the USA........

All that aside, I am sad when an American business quits, regardless of the reason.

 

[gunsandgunsmithing]

I am about a pro-American as one can get. I proudly served as a USAF pilot for 24 years.

I always look to local or USA made first and am even willing to pay a little more to get something that is made in the USA. I won't however spend a LOT more, and I absolutely won't accept lesser quality.

So I like my annealer from Australia, my powder from Australia and Canada, my brass from Finland, my biggest bolt gun from the Czech Republic, my glass from Germany, and my press from Germany.

Except for my big bolt gun, ALL my other bolt rifles are USA made. Most are Winchester, but then again my favorite shotgun was made in Belgium and my favorite lever gun was made in Japan.

So if an American company wants me to buy there stuff, they need to make it better or almost as inexpensive as what foreign companies make. And yes, both of my vehicles were made in the USA.

Also, I imagine I am a lot more aligned with Australian annealer companies, Canadian powder companies, German reloading press companies, and Czech rifle makers than I am half of the population of the USA........

All that aside, I am sad when an American business quits, regardless of the reason.

You are afforded American wages and freedoms yet you seem to blame Americans for not using slaves to be more competitive. I'm out of this one. Ya'll enjoy.

 

[mudduck]

It's not elected officials who offshore labor, it's CEOs and "maximizing shareholder value" that sends American manufacturing jobs overseas.

I think it's a bit strange when people blame Wal-Mart for destroying small businesses when they come to town. The truth is, it's the town's people that destroy those small businesses buy shopping at the Wal-Mart, but they always have a justification. Anything to deflect blame.

Americans want it fast and they want it cheap and really, they don't care about lost jobs, until it's theirs.

So I guess u like to buy cheap China junk. ‍‍‍

 

[darkangel_r2]

I fully expect crickets on this one.

It depends on the definition of capitalism you use. But I would suggest you look at the percentage of each nations' gdp that is produced by state owned busnesses. In China 40+% of their gdp is state owned business. So obviously not their labor.

But more over its a free and fair market that decides price, and private ownership of the profits and production of goods and services that denotes a capitalist system. So technically the second two nations engage in trade and they have different prices due to government policy its corporatism. If government policy is artificially altering prices of a good from each source it is no longer technically capitalism. So things like labor laws and environmental protections causing different prices in a market is not capitalism. Man made barriers to entry have to be the same for all parties to be considered capitalism. Natural barriers can vary and the system can still be considered capitalist.

TLDR:
If government policy favors some sellers over others in the cost to bring a good to market, then by definition that market is not capitalist.

So since china, india, insert place US labor is outsourced to here...have labor laws that allow for sweat shops with suicide nets, environmental policy that allows for poisoned rivers, and no peneltaies for international corporate espionage, we can not consider their substantial role in our markets as capitalism. It is corporatism.

I am a proponent of protectionist policies if that didn't come through in this message. Only way to keep international markets fair if they play by different rules. And if you have a fiat currency your really want to be the people making all the things.

So to answer your question if they have identical labor, environmental, ect... laws to us and their labor is cheaper then they are the capitalist labor solution.

 

[darkangel_r2]

If it was meant for me, it makes just about as much sense. I said people have choices and they avail themselves of those choices, that's the "free market". I championed no particular system or country/regime. It is you who assumes my motives and beliefs, assumptions based upon zero facts.

I grow bored with your subpar argument skills.

A market is made of more than just buyers. It takes two to tango as they say, supply and demand make a market. If a market is not fair to the suppliers because of government regulation it is again by definition not a capitalist market as the government policy then picks winners and losers. That is typically why international economies become more monopolistic and exploitive.

 

[gunsandgunsmithing]

If it was meant for me, it makes just about as much sense. I said people have choices and they avail themselves of those choices, that's the "free market". I championed no particular system or country/regime. It is you who assumes my motives and beliefs, assumptions based upon zero facts.

I grow bored with your subpar argument skills.

Hell, I wasn't even arguing. I was just pointing out a couple of areas where you are just wrong and that you appear to be more communist than American. I'm not sure what you're doing but you are greatly outnumbered here, by Americans who support our way of life. Yes, China and their way of life very much is pretty much the polar opposite of ours. Could we do better...Absolutely, and we should be doing more to stop china from dominating our market, flooding it with low quality products. Again, I'm not arguing at all. It's not really an argument at all when one side is a leftist who blames America and its fundamental business system, which was at a time the greatest the world has ever seen and still is, if you believe that slave labor is morally wrong and that that puts us at a competitive disadvantage, along with other govt regulations that put china in a better position to produce a cheaper product. It's just a sad situation but no, I'm not arguing with a liberal communist. They and you only see the world they want to see. Reality, be damned.

Politics are banned on here and this is just that. So no, you haven't seen anything yet. Your theory is and has been proven wrong and I merely brought up a couple of examples.

If China is so great, you can go back at any time...if they'll allow you to. Isn't that some irony?

 

[Big_Daddy]

If all of those who are so horribly offended by China's use of "slave labor" really gave a crap about the "plight" of Chinese workers, they would forego ownership of ANY Chinese-made products. It could be done but it would be neither easy, nor particularly pleasant. But they won't because they really don't care, it's just the right's version of virtue signalling. Far easier to shout "Slavery!", "Communist", "Free Tibet" and "The Uighurs" from the keyboard of your "slave-made" phone.

This has been an entertaining exchange though. Now you guys can return to the pity-party for the OP, whose product is apparently outsold by a product costing three times as much (and isn't Chinese-made), yet it's China's fault.

The OP IS NOT talking about the AMP annealer....
I was there for the original discussion and it involved allegations that his product was "knocked" off by someone and that they were having the unit/parts sourced in China.

 

[cinch29433]

The free market is clouded (totally obscured) by the tax code. Incentives and loopholes with no penalty or increased tariff for those who go off shore. Parking profit offshore is also an incentive and a tax shelter. If mom and pop could survive they would thru hard work but this is often clouded by the markets. Mom and pop have to pay for health care, workers comp, Medicare, and any other state or local baloney that some kid in Vietnam does not receive. Oil futures and taxes have more to do with gas prices than refinery costs for sure.

The tax code keeps a flat tax from being implemented when folks realize they can't deduct their mortgage or state and local taxes. The OP was correct this has to do with politicians and not customers. The tariff on those Cupertino products should make a US product more viable. This can't happen as the free market is controlled by the stock indexes and not some old feller's wallet.

Always remember when you shop that China, Vietnam, Turkey and other places can't even make a good pocket knife, and its better your sister in a whorehouse than your brother on a Honda.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

The good thing about these threads is that they lure folks from the shadows to get added to the ignore list, they just cant help it. Ive been to china more than most. Worked side by side with some good folks i still call friends. As long as their social score stays up and i dont lure them accidentally into saying something wrong on our communications they will be ok. They and their families enjoy the fruits of their labor and the benefits their foreign education afforded them… but it can end at any moment, just ask Peng Shuai the tennis star.