If you buy fewer shirts, but better quality shirts by someone made in the US- hand tailored shirts, for example- you ARE buying a different item, but you are also providing a wage for someone in the US. Just because you may like what you are buying, or may like where you are buying it, does not make it disingenuous. I don't think making the identical cheap shirt and trying to sell it here is workable without government protectionism being involved (as it is in so many other countries)- though I grant you, I buy more expensive American products when possible, but I do think buying goods that are artisan made, and encouraging that, can work. In Paris people seem to purchase fewer items,yet items of higher quality (many made in France)- rather than buying lots of crappy cheap stuff. I saw the same phenomenon in Scotland- though it is less common among the young. But older people shop for expensive Scottish woolens, buy a few things, and wear those- rather than wearing many cheap outfits made in China. I'm sure they buy their Scottish woolens for many reasons- but in buying the more expensive Scottish woolens does have the result of supporting Scottish wool makers and weavers.
You may not think it would work to do this, but it is not disingenuous, it is simply unworkable, which is something else altogether. |
