...I hear about "class envy" but what about "beating up on the little guy"?
As the famous and famously successful investor Warren Buffett said: "There is a class war in America. My class (the wealthy) is winning."
FWIW, the not-wealthy class is not even fighting.
I've told this story any number of times elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here. A few years ago, I was browsing for a dining room set in a store near Philly that sold antiques and reproductions. I saw a set of black walnut, ball and claw feet, the whole deal. But, there was something about the carving on the feet that was just off. A bit clunky. If you've seen enough carved wood (I had a client who was a high-end cabinetmaker, so I have seen a lot.), you can just tell when the carving is not right. So, I got the salesman to talking. Asked him "this is a reproduction, right?" "Yes. It is." "Uh-huh. Where'd they get the wood?" "Oh, it's local."
So, I led him into talking more about the piece, and he revealed that while the wood was, indeed, local Pennsylvania walnut, the craftspeople who made it were not. In fact, the wood had been harvested and dried locally, then shipped in a container to the craftspeople who were Vietnamese, living and working in Vietnam. They then proceeded to cut and carve and build the furniture and shipped it back to the USofA for sale at a price better-than-competitive to locally produced. The carvings were clunky in part because the carvers had never seen a real ball and claw foot.
I passed on the set for a lot of reasons, not the least of which that I didn't want to support a system so f'd up it deemed reasonable shipping wood half-way around the world to be made into furniture to be shipped back and sold within 30 miles of where the trees from which it was made grew.
FWIW, when I buy boots, I buy GI surplus. Made in America. Properly broken in, they're the most comfortable I've found. YMMV.
