Evan Carew wrote:

An emotional subject for me, so I'm not sure I can provide useful
analysis, but it seems to me that if the companies making these parts
spent as much on reengineering their parts to be cheaper to make as they
did on shipping their operations off shore, we'd have a much more robust
manufacturing base here in the states.

When I was a young engineer, around 1970, I worked in the machine tool
industry. It was an exciting time with many new technologies. The physical
plant was getting ready for replacement, since most of it dated back to the
wartime expansion in the forties. The oil embargo and related problems put
paid to that. Rather than investing in capital equipment, management took
the decision to seek cheaper labor. Rather than designing new equipment,
the firm I was with lasted a few more years rebuilding the forties machines
before they were shipped overseas. I was fortunate; control circuits are
control circuits and the logic of relays and transistors transferred well
to the microprocessors that were coming in; many were not as flexible or
were not in a position to start on a new career path.

You can now drive through the Connecticut river valley, once the home of
many of the US machine tool producers and find poverty and boarded up
factories. It's also a sensitive subject for me.



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