I don't like off-shore manufacturing, but it keeps the prices low and everyone likes that but it's not only the corporate elite who benefit- people who don't make much money can still buy a TV- my 27" Sony that was bought new in '89 cost me $800 because I paid employee price at a store where I had worked and that's like $1550 now, without any gains in technology.
We can't be paid well AND produce cheap goods when we're regulated and taxed as heavily as we are, based on the gross corporate tax rate. Outside of the US, materials can be used that make people scream just knowing they exist without even being exposed to them but in a finished item, they're often harmless (I used 'harmless' because we all know about the Chinese goods coming here with lead paint, etc). Even something like nitrocellulose lacquer, which was incredibly common in the recent past was essentially banned in the US until they found a way of spraying it without the fumes getting into the atmosphere- the only problem is that the spray booths for using this in large manufacturing facilities cost well over $1Million, yet we can still buy it in spray cans at the local hardware store.
I think we need to keep as much manufacturing on our own soil, but the sad fact is, we can't unless the goods are very specific to our own use, security and transportation from someplace else would drive the cost past the point of diminishing returns. A good example is plywood- Japanese ships were coming to the NW states and buying logs, going to international water to shave the veneer, assemble, press, cut and bundle the finished materials before coming back to sell it to buyers in the US. I read that it took three days to return after they left port. US manufacturers couldn't compete with that.
