[superdeez]

Ironically, unions designed to protect the American worker seem to be in the long run putting him out of a job. Look at the union factories of the 50s and 60s building electronics: with healthcare, retirement plans, and wage raises given at the threat of strikes, it raised the cost of manfacture, thus raising the price to the consumer. Meanwhile, in Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc., such unions didn't exist, and in some cases workers even worked almost at gunpoint (as is still the case I'm sure in some situations), for literally pennies a day. Thus, even though the device has to ride a frieghter several thousand miles to get to the North American shore, the cost to the consumer can be less, with still a decent margin of profit.

Now that manfacturing in the US is basically dead, it's the turn of the auto industry to be strangled by unions, namely UAW. Now, while UAW has kept standards of living high for decades, and protected the worker from corporate tyranny, it's costing manfacturers so much they can barely make a profit on sales of their new vehicles.

A case-in-point is GM, who is keeping several models which sell less than 10,000 vehicles a year on the whole of North America simply because certan UAW workers have a status for which they HAVE to be paid whether they work or not! This is why certan models are sold for "fleet sales" and not advertised to the public, nor are dealerships stocking them. An example is the Chevy Lumina. By all accounts it was "replaced" in 2000 by the Chevy Impala, however Chevy still manfactured it through 2001. Sales were nominal at best, but they still kept workers busy.

Another problem for American companies is stupidity at the top and stifiling corporate beauracracies that strangle ideas for years. Thus in the 70s and 80s comes the problem of the US consumer seeing the domestic product as inferior technologically, more expensive, and thus they flock to the foreign goods flooding our shores.

It happened in the electronics industry 25-35 years ago, and it's happening in the auto industry today. Chrysler has already gone out of business, sold to Diamler-Benz. It's no merger, folks. If you want to see the US car industry in a decade if nothing changes, look to the British car industry. I shudder to imagine a day when it is impossible to buy a new domestic vehicle.

EDIT: A lot of people don't understand our hobby, me personally I love these old electronics because of what they stand for: There's a quiet dignity about these old, heavy, well built machines that the junk from SE Asia doesn't have. Does anyone agree?