This uniform is made WHERE???

[Kamelian]

I was EXTREMELY disappointed when I recently went to the council Scout Shop. I found that none of the clothing items in the Scout Shop were being Made In America. The shirt I wound up with was some shoddy garment that was produced in China according to the tag. After the first laundering, I had to take apart some bad seams and re-sew an entire section on the stupid thing. That entailed finding thread the right color and matching up the stitch length so the repair would look the same as the rest of the garment.

 

Because I had already sewn all my insignia to it by hand before it was laundered the first time, I wasn't about to return the stupid thing to the scout shop - which, incidentally, is 50+ miles from where I live - since I knew I would probably get the run-around from someone wanting to defend the idea that it's OK to sell substandard merchandise that was made outside the USA. Now that the shirt has been laundered again, and I've worn it a couple of times, I now find the quality of the fabric is also going to be a problem. It's scratchy & uncomfortable to wear without a shirt underneath it, so now I am thoroughly steamed. Where are all our good old USA-made all-cotton products?

 

People, I listen nearly every day to the unemployment numbers and the news, so even if nobody will admit it I know how bad our economic situation is in the US. I have friends who are unemployed or under-employed and cannot find sufficient work to support their basic needs and feed & clothe their children properly. One friend has a daughter who recently graduated from college with a good degree and fabulous grades - and when she went to apply for a job in her chosen field, she found over 900 other applicants applying for the same job opening.

 

In our town, we have a new industry where big generators are to be built. When the opportunity came up to have Siemens locate here, the city operated on the belief that it would offer our local residents a new source for employment opportunity, but when the plant finally opened, nearly all the new hires were people from a town about 50 miles away, and most of them commute. It did almost nothing for the our local jobs market.

 

One of our rental tenants has been unemployed for more than a year and her unemployment compensation insurance has run out. Unless things change so that she's successful in filing a claim and getting paid, her out-of-work status probably won't be included in the national or state unemployment numbers. She still sends in her weekly unemployment claim forms, religiously, but hasn't received a check in nearly a year. Her residential companion was unemployed for several months. After being re-hired, by the same company he worked for when laid off, he was brought back as part-time rather than the full-time status he had before. He's been under-employed for nearly a year since then, and has lost all his benefits. These two people have a lot of trouble meeting their basic expenses.

 

Our national debt is up to around $49,000 for every American citizen, regardless of age or ability to work. The strange thing is, only $900 billion of the nearly $14 trillion national debt the government claims we "owe" is related to an actual debt to some other country - China - and the rest of it is pure Blue Sky related to the irresponsible and ill-advised printing by the Fed of a lot of value-less money that was used for the bail-out TARP plans (AIG, GM, etc.) and all the other foolishness the current administration has supported. Then, after a few years of upstart & predatory companies offering mortgage loans based on stated income, with no proof of that income or property or other assets to back up the claim of stated income, and on the basis of unsupported over-inflated appraisals, now the mortgage market is a shambles and ready to collapse.

 

Given these problems, how in the world can BSA justify offering through its shops and catalogs the poorly made clothing and other shoddy merchandise I've seen, nearly all of which appears to have been made outside the USA? In this bad economy, with so many Americans out of work, why are we NOT finding ways to conserve American jobs IN THE USA and help keep our American companies from going out of business. To do otherwise is, at the very least - dare I say it??? - thoroughly UNAMERICAN.

 

I think the BSA - being an organization which says it promotes American values - has a responsibility to its American membership to offer American-made products. Because of this responsibility, BSA ought to be doing its fair share toward helping to preserve the jobs & companies IN AMERICA where Americans can be gainfully employed, so that when our youth members grow up and try to have a productive future, they can count on having a future that doesn't involve being dependent on other countries for shoddy poorly-made goods and inadequate services.

 

I want to be able to buy uniform items, insignia, and other BSA products that are Made In America. I'm fairly certain - in fact I'm almost positive - that I'm not the only one in this country who's interested in seeing American vendors & merchants go back to selling American-made products.

 

I hereby refuse to purchase any more "Made in Asia" or "Made in Mexico" Boy Scout camping, uniform items, or literature. I want to BUY AMERICAN. If I have to resort to buying some off-brand of clothing that's American made, in the correct color, and use it to take the place of a BSA brand that's not American made, I'll do it. What is BSA going to do to satisfy the demand for American-made products?

 

OK everyone - I'm done venting. Many thanks to all for allowing me blow off steam.

[Beavah]

Yah, no problem. Though this probably belongs in da Issues & Politics forum.

 

Sorry to hear about your many friends in da underemployed category. The banksters who did this to the economy and effectively mugged ordinary working citizens for their multi-million dollar bonuses should have gone to jail. Of course, that was made-in-America fraud and malfeasance, eh? At least in China, they execute people like that as a matter of honor.

 

Yeh won't see a rebirth of American manufacturin' until we fix the banking system and American unskilled labor is willin' to work for less. Or until the dollar tanks.

 

Beavah

 

 

[clemlaw]

I was overjoyed to see that my son's Cub Scout shirt was made in Bangladesh, because as far as I know, unlike another major American trade partner, the Bangladesh economy is not propped up by slave labor, and I'm reasonably certain that the guy who made it needed the job.

 

When I went to get my adult shirt, I was so lulled into warm fuzzy feelings that I didn't bother looking at the country of origin until I got home.

 

Sure enough, it came from that major Asian trade partner whose economy is propped up by slave labor.

 

By the way, where I live, you don't want too much of your outdoor clothing to be 100% cotton, so I don't fault them too much in that regard.(This message has been edited by clemlaw)

[desertrat77]

Kamelian, I'm with you! Low quality shirts, high cost, made in China--to uniform an organization that stresses citizenship and character to young folks--not one of BSA's finer moments.

 

The only thing I can suggest is to watch Ebay--you can pick up some American made shirts at a fair price. As you know, no scout uniform is ever considered obsolete provided it's still servicable.

 

Beavah, excellent thoughts on the bankers and industry.

 

 

[Bando]

Glad I snatched up some of the last ODR 100% cotton uniform shirts before National Supply ran out. Unfortunately, the removal of my patches from my youth shirts left some rather unsightly stains, so I had to scramble to buy new.

 

Now the only challenge is to make sure I stay fit enough to still fit into a size small, haha.(This message has been edited by bando)

[infoscouter]

For years people complained about the cost of Scout uniforms, which _were_ made in the U.S. Now they complain because they're NOT made in the U.S.

 

I understand that the BSA has tried to find on shore vendors, but has been unable to get U.S. manufacturers (the few that are left) to respond to the bid invitations, due to the quantities involved. So, they go where the manufacturers are. Off-shore.

[gcnphkr]

infoscouter is correct. Almost all garment manufacturing has been sent off shore. Most that are left are either highly specialized or are not really manufactures but finishers. Even when the fabric is made here it is shipped out to manufacturers in other countries.

 

This is actually a good thing.

 

If this was a bad thing then it is also a bad thing for silicon wafers to be manufactured here in Arizona instead of there in Kansas. Clearly that takes away jobs from you. Of course when you do that then Arizona has to increase its light plane manufacturing capacity. Soon we will have "Buy Arizona Planes!" campaigns. Before long every town, village, hamlet and home has to make their own light airplanes, silicon wafers, horseshoes and stone axes. Division of labor is why we no longer have 90% of America working on farms or making flint arrowheads.

[UCEagle72]

Boy's Life launched a "Way Back" Machine on their web site to let you look at their magazine over the years (thanks to Google Books). So I took a look at the January 1970 issue - http://boyslife.org/wayback#issue=dkJ5dSeKf3MC - where just about 1/2 through there is an ad for official uniforms for the 60th anniversary.

 

$13.50 bought you a complete uniform (socks, belt, hat, slide, neckerchief, too) -- made in America. Now using the Inflation Calculator provided by our Federal Government - http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=13.50&year1=1970&year2=2010 - I found that this is equivalent to $76.13 in today's money.

 

Okay ... so I went to ScoutStuff and added up the cost for a new uniform (using the same configuration as a 1970 uniform) -- total cost - $108.

 

Things that make you go "hmmmmmmmmmmm"

 

 

[Proud Eagle]

You are going to have to change a lot of stuff to get the textile industry back to the US. To do so in a way that it can compete on price will be even more difficult. It isn't impossible, but not at all easy. You basically need to reinvent the entire economic order and much of the government structure to do that. Good luck with that plan.

 

Also, official inflation numbers are a bit questionable, to put it mildly.

 

Interesting point, the official inflation story says that today's dollar is worth only 1/50th what one was a hundred years ago. Keep that fact in mind when you read the prices of things listed in the 1911 reprint of the handbook.

[Woapalanne]

Thanks, UCeagle. Just more proof that things made in America are NOT more expensive. They are priced higher at the retail level, but are NOT necessarily more expensive at the supplier level.

 

Our government (both parties) have destroyed manufacturing in America through ridiculous one-way "free trade" laws and regulations. And we have allowed it.

[Scoutfish]

The bigger problem is greed.

 

Now,I am not against anybody making money. I am not against anybody doing real well at making money.

 

But I am amazed at companys that the CEO's are always giving themselves 6 figure " Good performance " bonuses and then having to figure out how to cut expenses because they cannot afford the "GP" bonuses on revenue alone.

 

So what do they do? Cut back employee perks and benefits such as health care or insurance.

Then they cut back the number of employees to save money.

 

Problem is twofold: Less workers means less product being made and in a roundabout way, people who can no longer affoed to buy the product because they have no jobs.

 

Look at the auto industry: All the CEO's and board members make more money in "GP" bonuses that I will make in a lifetime. That's not even including their saleries. But they weren't bringing in enough money to cover it, so they shut down factories and moved them overseas where labor is cheaper.

 

Factory after factory shut down and moved overseas. More and more people lost their jobs.

 

Funny thing was, those unemployed people used to buy the very cars they made when theu had a job making money. Now expand to other products. More factories shut down, more people without jobs.

 

So the company is still losing money and cannot afford to give the executives those big fancy 6 figure "GP" bonuses.

What to do? Close 3 more factories and then ask the government to bail you out.

 

As soon as the government sends you a check...pay the the "good performance" bonuses to the CEO's who were waiting for them, then see what you can do with the rest.

 

Funny thing is...there wasn't any "Good performance" at all in the whole system.

[gcnphkr]

Inflation is a funny thing, it all depends on what you are measuring. The CPI tries to average it based on many different things, but using it to determine what something would cost today, or a long time ago is fairly useless.

 

For example. If you were to base inflation on the price of gold or a loaf of bread then that uniform would cost about $280 today. On gas, about $130. On an entry level car it would be about $67. Based on the cost of a long distance call it would be under $3. Based on the computing cost in instructions per second, around $0.000024.

 

In 1970 a basic men's suit would have run about $35-40 dollars, now about $350-400. Yet a pair of Wrangler jeans only went from $10 to $20 in those 40 years. So even in clothing the inflation adjuster just doesn't work.

[Kamelian]

Yeh - I agree maybe it should have been under the issues & politics, but I didn't realize there was such a forum. Sorry.

 

Overseas manufacturing isn't a problem in and of itself - it's the lack of any tariffs on incoming merchandise from other countries that creates a major problem for American workers. If the incoming merchandise was taxed the way it ought to be, with a tariff on all foreign-made stuff, there wouldn't be so many American companies taking their jobs overseas. Tariffs wree supposed to protect American jobs by causing foreign-made items from undercutting the price of products made in the US. I have no idea when we quit putting tariffs on foreign-made things, but it seems like it began when the Japanese cars and electronics started coming into broader demand.

 

On a slightly different subject, I believe the credit scoring system is a way for banking-type companies to browbeat and intimidate the general public, and to punish them economically in some way. My husband agrees, and is of the opinion that the credit score system is the principal cuplrit behind the breaking of the American financial status of the normal citizen. Again, it comes down to the banks & banking executives (and Wall Street) trying to figure out novel ways to run up account expenses so they can increase their consumer fraud and theft to include things like late fees, overlimit fees, pay-by-phone fees, etc. Husband refers to these guys as the men who sit around swimming pools by their big fancy mansions sucking on their big brown... er... cigar/s (husband has a different word, starts with "d" & ends with "k").

 

When I was a kid, as the nationalized credit cards started appearing in mailboxes during the 1960's, my dad said virtually the same thing. He wasn't what one would call a well-educated man, but he was pretty savvy. He'd be 100 years old if he were still with us. Dad believed in local credit lines carried with home-town stores, but he claimed the kinds of plastic credit cards that were being made available after about 1964, to anyone who wanted to sign up, would bring about the collapse of the US economy at some future point, probably in about 40 to 50 years he said. He told me not to ever use them unless I absolutely had to, and then no more than absolutely necessary, claiming that "most people", especially those who don't understand the basics of economics and the repercussions of over-spending, would over-use such cards and run themselves into bankruptcy very quickly.

 

Dad also said he felt the unions were the worst thing going for the US economy (and the biggest mistake the US Gov't. ever allowed) because unions tend to keep incompetent workers employed at exorbitant rates of income & benefit packages (through tenure and seniority) while keeping qualified workers out of the work place because they don't happen to be union members and because there isn't any place for them while the incompetents are there. I know of at least two teachers who should have gotten their walking papers years ago, because they're an embarassment to the schools and a liability in the classroom, and they're still teaching because the NEA won't let the school board get rid of them.

 

So, we believe the credit score system may be the underlying cause of much of the banking & mortgage fiasco nonsense going on today (and we think the unions are nearly as bad). The entire country would be better off if credit scores were banned entirely and banks & loan companies had to return to the practice of judging people by a thorough review of their income and asset structure and their spending habits before granting them loans, the way it was before 1970.

 

And on yet another topic, I heard a suggestion from a comic the other night that sounds almost plausible - turn the immigration issue into a reality show. Vote IN the people who work hard and want to stay here (even though they may be here illegally), and vote OUT folks who contribute nothing to the system (like the Octo-Mom, the gal who had 6 kids she couldn't support and then had octuplets and thought she was special).

 

Thanks to everyone - this thread has been as entertaining as it's been informative. Later guys/gals.

[BadenP]

Proud Eagle

 

The problem is we have done away with most import tariffs which would make foreign uniforms prices be on par with US made uniforms. The unions I agree were part of the problem but not the main cause. We eliminated tariffs so we could export more of our steel, auto's, and agricultural produce overseas, but wait we no longer have a steel industry or much of either an auto or agricultual industry either. Every foreign country now has our technology and has improved it on their own so our technology industry is struggling to compete world wide.

 

We have gone from being the strongest industrial nation in the world to a second class nation that makes very little anymore. Our high unemployment, weak dollar, loss of all of our industry has been going on for over 50 years and for some reason all our economic guru's could not forsee this happenning. This recession/depression we are in is mainly due to the government and industry greed to make the fast buck without any consideration of or planning for the future of our country. Corporate/Government greed is what has been erroding our economy for many decades now and unless this changes dramatically we can never truly recover as a nation.

[Mr. Boyce]

Here's an odd comment: have your local tailor make you a scout shirt. It may not be as expensive as one might think.