China Depot

Went with my wife to the local Home Depot.  Twenty years ago I would have enjoyed wandering around looking at mitre saws and plumbing fixtures and different grades of plywood.  Alas, these days the home improvement bug no longer bites.  Furthermore, quality American-made tools are getting to be harder and harder to find, and much more expensive, than their brand-name equivalents that are now mostly made in China.

This is especially true of the lighting fixtures.  I never saw so many shiny floor and desk lamps, and at such outrageously low prices.  You can just about get a brand new desk lamp for the price you'd pay to replace a bulb on your old one.  How the heck do they manage that?  Is it any wonder that our trade imbalance with the People's Republic of China is what it is?

Okay, so the small print on the box says the item was designed in the U.S., and then manufactured in China.  But how long do you think it will be before the design labs will also be relocated across the Pacific?

I used to work with a guy who remembered how we shipped American 'oil for the lamps of China' (the title of a 1934 novel by Alice Tisdale Hobart, which was made into a 1935 movie starring Pat O'Brien).  A mere 70+ years ago.