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You are right, but the "we" who don't want to pay for it does not include me. I'll take fewer items of better quality and made here over the alternative almost every time. It takes some work, and you don't get cheap, but I'm OK with that. You surely can make good things here in the States and be reasonable. You just don't build your factory of trained/skilled craftspeople in NY city or LA.Production of low-priced goods can only come back to the US (or to Germany, for that matter) when labour there is cheap enough to support the low prices. Do you want to live in that country?Let's face it: It tis the customers, you and me and Uncle Willy, who decide ethis every day. We want to pay no money for food, clothing, shoes, toys? Then we get no-nutricion meat, cheap-looking shirts, boxy glued shoes, and baby-poisioning wooden blocks for the little we want to spend. I'm by no means a "China-lover" and I know the country a bit, living a couple of years not too far from guygardner's avatar, but he's right: The table was set by America and Europe and the Chinese simply knew how to play the game. They want it cheap? They get it cheap. Money is all these westerners care about.But before we embark on a kind of Dr.-Fu-Man-Chu-theme, these days production already leaves China again, partly because the government want to push the low end out, partly because others are even cheaper (and more ruthless when it comes to poisioning the environment). Anyway, it is the customers who decide. When I tell anybody a pair of shoes sets me back 200 Euros, they declare me mad on the spot. But quality has a price. And cheap goods have a price, too, but the currency is other than money.