I have propagated my new store with as many domestic products as I can find.
The problem is that made in USA optics almost don't exist any more. I am still waiting to see if I can become a Leupold dealer, as I would ONLY sell Leupold products if I could.
I spoke to Burris thinking they were a made in the USA product, and they are NOT. I spoke to US Optics and they only have few select scopes that are over $3000 that are ASSEMBLED in the USA.
How is it not an issue of national security that we have no domestic suppliers of firearm optics?
1/3 of the country is unemployed now, yet we cannot seem to make anything.
I applaud your belief in the idea that American Made is a sign of quality and to promote only those products. That certainly used to be the case, and it was in fact the rallying cry for many a Union boss for decades while we faced growing competition from foreign manufacturers. Buy American or eventually lose your job was not just a hyperbolic forecast, it became fact. But IMOP not for the reasons you'd expect. You have to take into account the national and world financial condition as globalism began to take a strong foothold.
Severe inflation, high unemployment, long lines at gas stations, union workers strikes dominating the evening news every night. Those were pretty rough times with little hope for change on the horizon, and personal greed won the day, as it always does, both in politics and business. Politicians facing a growing constituency of financially devastated workers, who, while watching union workers clamor for higher wages and better benefits realized that their political and financial future was in jeopardy unless they seemed to take a hard line against unions. A position dictated by rich donors. So President Reagan busted the Federal Air Traffic Controller's union, and so began widespread union busting culminating recently in SCOTUS ruling Unions cannot compel paying of dues. Gone is the workers union, along with the middle class. Also gone is any semblance of non partisanship in the courts as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse recently detailed.
The average worker who'd not seen a salary increase for years, or maybe had been unemployed for months simply had to make a hard choice when the washer or dryer broke down and had to be replaced. Or to buy a gas guzzler American made car or a gas sipping Japanese car to replace the Ford with a blown engine or transmission.
In those times, nationality has got nothing to do with it, as few could afford to make that Buy American choice. It was a perfect storm of capitalism working coherently to destroy the middle class, the biggest consumer group in the nation.
And China was more than ready to lead the way to globalization, with a vast and starving population and a willing, quickly growing manufacturing sector.
We can look back now and see the damage done to our economy and talented workforce by the decisions made four decades ago. But today, businesses still refuse to give cost of living raises, or any raise for that matter, choosing instead to replace workers with fresh, underpaid workers. At least that's how it is here in Texas, a state that many businesses are relocating to in search of cheaper labor. Machine automation has helped greatly in that endeavor, but those decisions are still being made to benefit personal wealth over a solid, stable workforce.
I want to see your business succeed and prosper. If you can do that selling only American Made products, that would be a watershed moment to be held up to the nation as a window to a brighter future.
I say go for it!
