FEATURE Island Sandals at Sam’s Shoes.
Help for a Freshman When a savvy teen saw the segment
on World News, she wrote to them asking for help in furnishing her dorm room. Her college, along with 800 other universities had mailed all freshmen a catalog that sells products not made in the USA. What could she do? In stepped reporter Sharon Alfonzi who was able to duplicate pretty much everything the roommate had bought – but made in the USA, with a modest sav- ings. Continuing to raise our awareness, she pointed out that a college student would spend on average around $800 which would translate into $46 billion dol- lars nationwide, which could further trans- late into half a million new jobs for America, so look at those catalogs carefully.
Deciphering Bar Codes We’ve probably received a forwarded email from our friends (and sent it on to
others) citing the importance of reading bar codes to detect the ori- gin of goods that we buy. Indigna- tion running high, we run to the pantry to examine all of the cans and packages there, closely in- specting the first three digits, as we are instructed in the email. Groaning aloud, we see that many of them are between 690-695 that tells us they are made in China, or 471 which is Taiwan. Sadly, there aren’t many that begin with 00–13 that denotes made in Canada or the USA.
This little bite of consumerism seems
to set us off into high dudgeon and for a while it is our favorite topic of discussion, but old habits die hard. We settle down into our comfortable ways again, neglect- ing to check our facts. Remember that
www.snopes.com, although not infallible, can provide some objective feedback as to the validity of many “shock emails” which we should not accept at face value. They tell us that this is a mixture of true and false as the UPC-A bar code and the Euro- pean Article Number (EAN) incorporate two or three country codes, but what those country codes indicate is the coun- try or economic region where a particular bar code was assigned, not the country where the product identified by that bar code originated. We can’t just jump on the bandwagon – we just need to look for the magic words “Made in America.” And that
maker, in his book, “Americans Can Buy American” teaches the importance of knowing whether a company is American, yet manufactures overseas, versus a foreign owned company that maintains an Ameri- can based factory. Waves of change need to lap on San Clemente’s shores, perhaps slowly and gently.
Online Purchases For all those shopaholics out there, es-
does not mean “Distributed in the USA,” where the products are made overseas and a large company here distributes them. “Designed by,” and “Assembled in,” are other things to note. Look at the label closely and remember that we do have a choice, and choice involves recycling our dollars … preferably in San Clemente. We vote with our dollars everyday
making decisions whether our cash goes to an American company or overseas, how- ever, if we are to encourage manufacturing in our country we sometimes have to com- promise on brand loyalty. Roger Simmer-
pecially the ones that can’t keep off the In- ternet late at night, trying to decompress with several glasses of wine, your retail therapy can seriously be impacted by something similar to ‘drunk dialing’ with- out a telephone. It’s called Buying Under the Influence (BUI) with consequences that aren’t limited to returning the prod- uct. Compulsive shoppers get sucked in by the free shipping and instant sales and the easy inebriated click (oh, it didn’t go through, I’ll click again…and again. Why is UPS delivering five boxes?). You can’t be a discerning shopper when you are im- paired, so how can you know if something is made in our country? So, buy that extra gift here in town. Buy
something that is made in this country. Buy into this lifestyle. You have the shopping list in your hand ready for a quick shop- ping spree. Our local retailers and manu- facturers can help by displaying a Made in America sign and they’ll thank you for your business. Remember our Flag; after all, it’s starring the US.b
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