Made in the USA — Bringing Affordable Quality Back to US Consumers

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The hallmarks of true free market capitalism are the production of quality goods and services that are affordable and competitive and that provide both the laborer a decent wage and the private business owner a decent profit. I can still remember my Economics 101 professor explaining that if someone made a widget then a free market economy puts no restraints on someone else coming up with a better widget that is just as affordable if not more affordable than the previous widget, while not resorting to abusive labor practices to produce and sell that widget. Healthy competition in a free market economy makes for better products, services, and standards of living.

Leftist ideology, with its overreaching government intrusion, regulation, and unaccountable power structure, has infected every aspect of our society. I state this first as a victim of crime who has, as yet, failed to see any enforcement of written law, and I state this as a consumer fed up with poor goods and services. Bad government and bad business victimize all of us.

There’s probably not a day that goes by that most of us don’t exclaim, “Why doesn’t anything ever work right?!” Shoddy workmanship and poor materials that go into our products, some of which don’t work right out of the package, bring a whole new dimension to the term “planned obsolescence.” Take the light bulb for example. Remember all the promises that came with the new LED light bulbs? How they were supposed to last years longer than incandescent light bulbs, conserve energy, and save us money? Who can’t remember incandescent bulbs lasting many years, even those bulbs that were frequently used? But LED light bulbs? Sure, they use less energy, but what about all the claims that these bulbs are supposed to long outlast incandescent bulbs? Am I the only one who keeps spending money replacing LED bulbs because they burn out within a few months or after a year or two at best? Give me an old fashioned long lasting incandescent bulb any day over having to spend money to replace LED bulb after LED bulb. Yet in April of 2022, President Joe Biden and his Department of Energy — an unelected and unaccountable arm of government — decided to no longer let consumers decide what product they want that works best for them. Biden and his Department of Energy’s edict placed a ban on the manufacture of traditional incandescent light bulbs, as well as fluorescent bulbs, after July of 2022, and in February of 2023 a sales ban of incandescent and fluorescent bulbs goes into effect nationwide, with few exceptions. But will this result in better quality, longer lasting LED bulbs? Don’t count it. It’s poor consolation but at least most LED bulbs are made in the U.S.

Even more concerning than unreliable LED light bulbs is our forced reliance upon imported goods that are essential for our country, including our military, to operate. This spells doom for our economy and our national security. So many of our essential products come from China and other countries, some of which share a profound lack of warm and fuzzy feelings toward the U.S. For all intents and purposes China has declared war on us, as I outline in my previous article “No More Kowtowing — Protecting Our Country From China.” As I write this current article, news outlets report that the Chinese Communist Party has been flying spy balloons and other objects over our country for years, and it is entirely possible that these high-altitude balloons are capable of carrying EMP payloads that would throw our country, and most of Canada and Mexico, back into the Stone Age. Add to that all the years of the CCP’s hack jobs into our government and private businesses, and conducting military drills worldwide. Many of our essential medicines and medical supplies come from China. Many of the components used in our military materiel and in other essential consumer goods, like our automobiles, our appliances, our medical equipment, and our PCs, are made in China. This is just insanely dangerous to our survival as a nation and as individuals.

Some federal and state legislators are doing their best to encourage U.S. manufacture of our essential goods. They see the danger of relying upon an overt enemy to produce so much of what we need to survive and thrive as a country. But too many greedy, “woke” business executives are products of a left-influenced education system that has excoriated true free market capitalist principles of healthy competition to make and sell good quality items while treating their workers — who are also consumers — as partners in their businesses’ success and in the success of our economy and way of life. Instead, these “enlightened” left-leaning execs would rather look to China and other repressive countries to use their poorly-paid (if paid at all) native labor force to make essential products while these “robber barons” make an obscene profit selling schlock to the American consumer.

Here are some good old-fashioned free market capitalist solutions:

Begin aggressive domestic manufacturing of all essential products and services
Get rid of excessive government regulations that restrict the operation of private businesses and squelch entrepreneurs
Give tax breaks to companies that hire U.S. citizens to produce our essential goods and services
Give tax breaks to those companies which offer employees a fair wage and profit sharing in the success of the business
Give tax breaks to those companies whose owners and managers’ salaries are based on a percentage of their business success and corresponding to their employees’ salaries
Give tax breaks to those companies which coordinate training and employment of non-violent prisoners while in prison and after they’ve completed their sentence; these programs should emphasize the importance of developing personal ethics and participating in counseling services so as to reduce the recidivism rate and give prisoners the personal and professional skills they need to be productive citizens.

Paulette J. Buchanan is a former educator and college professor. In 2020 she spoke on Cults and the Law at the International Cultic Studies Association/University of Tennessee’s Nashville conference. In 2019 she spoke on Legislative Action at ICSA’s Santa Fe conference.

Buchanan’s book Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order describes her lifetime of abuse caused by her four older brothers, including their weaponization of the court system to file meritless lawsuits against her and many others. She finally obtained long overdue judgments and injunctions to put a stop to their lawsuits.

For more information and to purchase Paulette J. Buchanan’s book, Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order, please visit her website www.fightingforjusticebook.com, or order her book on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Paulette-Buchanan/e/B09N4ZBGY2%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share.