The Bradshaw family are on a mission to see whether they can survive for a year buying only British-made goods. Initially they struggled to find everyday items, like nappies, batteries and even British-made clothes. But after extensive research online and help from thousands of followers on social media James and Emily Bradshaw have been genuinely surprised by how much is still made in Britain. The one thing that has really disappointed them concerns their son Lucan. There just isn't much of a British toy industry.
British manufacturing has been in long-term decline for decades. Even though the cost of producing goods in developing countries is on the rise, it is still, in most cases, far cheaper to make things abroad.
"If we can come back to manufacturing things here and we put more value on to what it is that has been manufactured, then there is a message there - that it's not just how much it costs to make but what it's actually worth." It may sound idealistic, but this is the start of the Bradshaws' plan to get more people to follow their lead and buy British.
It's not just about Britain, is it? I'd say it's a global or at least european problem. What do you think?
I think that it is a really good idea. Not many people are aware of what they are buying and what is its country of origin. Local produce should be encouraged more, because it is good for the country to be at least partly self-sufficient in case of some crisis, war or embargo. Just remember the case when the gas company Gazprom limited its supply of gas to some of the european countries (including the Czech Republic)a year ago. Many of the countries had surprisingly big problems because they were dependent on this source of energy and they couldn't be self-sufficient. Not to mention that higher production of domestic goods would certainly improve economic situation in many countries.
ReplyDeleteI'm not an economist, but as I understand it, one of the economic arguments for international "free trade" is that the world is better off if there's a division of labor, just as society prospers if we don't all have to spend most of our days finding food or repairing our own houses, but can concentrate on what we do well while "outsourcing" those jobs to others who do them well. So, by the same logic, an ideal world would be one in which the various countries had their "specialities" and then all traded their products with each other. Assuming that's true, the question then becomes how far we are from that ideal and what policies are best for the world we actually live in (and/or what policies will tend to move everyone toward the ideal with the least disruption or risk). That's a very hard question, i.e. one that people have very different views about, and therefore a question that generates a lot of the current political debate in both the US and the UK. It's complicated, obviously, by the fact that the world's nations are not at equal levels of prosperity and that their internal rules are very different. Free trade therefore means big job losses in some countries as manufacturing is outsourced to cheaper countries; there are problems of exploitation (neo-"serfdom" or near-slave-labor in Third World mining and manufacturing, etc.); protections for workers, consumers and the environment are undercut in a "race to the bottom," etc.
ReplyDeleteIn light of those problems, I would broadly agree with Markéta that there's currently still some value in countries being at least somewhat self-sufficient. But very few are big enough to provide everything they need for themselves, so encouraging international trade is also still important. I think this problem may ultimately have a stable solution, but it could take another century of arguments and social changes before we arrive at it.