Sign of the times?

[ellarien]

I did some electronics shopping this afternoon, mostly for storage/backup media. I was somewhat surprised, when I unpacked my purchases, to notice that none of them bore the once-ubiquitous "Made in China" tag; in fact, two out of three items were at least "assembled" in North America, and the third in South Korea. Fluke, or a side-effect of the dollar's bad year?

Comments

[ellarien]

There are many pathological things about the American economy, to be sure. The most obvious, from where I sit, is the way the whole thing is built on the consumption of more and more stuff, most of it paid for on the never-never. I suppose it's not surprising that the middle-class media, funded by advertising or by the donations of the upper middle class, are more preoccupied with the concerns of the middle class than the poor.

I've seen it argued, in the last week, that the whole economy of Arizona has been built for years simply on new people moving into the state and needing new houses and all that goes with them, and I can believe it.