Made in "Your Country Here" ; Is it important to you?

[eppie]

If the playing field were level in international trade, I would agree with you. It isn't now and isn't likely to become so. The rule-set for companies here is not the same as for companies elsewhere. If we bought and sold only to ourselves (or places with similar rules about how to treat employees and how much pollution is allowable), we might be able to maintain a standard of living for all here, instead of increase the disparities between the low-wage-earners and the factory owners and mirror conditions elsewhere.

And now, after centuries of profiting and draining african and asian countries, we in the west start complaining about the playing field not being level. Although I of course fully agree with you in the fact that it would be great if other countries would have the same labour laws, environmental policies etc. that we have, we are not the ones with much reason to complain.

If we didn't have these sources of cheap labour that are making stuff we daily use for us, we would indeed have more work at home, but we would have less time for our jobs such as fill in your weird modern job name-manager which actually make a lot more money.

And talking about level playing field; you are lucky you live in Canada with 3.41 other canadians per square kilometer of land full of oil, gold, timber etc......especially in times of crises such as food shortages etc.
You are much richer because e.g. your land prices (for building a house for example) are probably 10 times cheaper than in Holland.....that is if you want to live close to a big city.....otherwise it is probably 1000 times cheaper.

I think buying local for environmental reasons (the farmers market example of deebye) is a good reason but living in a western country and buying local to keep jobs at home sounds selfish to me. (and already mentioned by a few others probably also doesn't make a lot of sense)