AFAIK, Wheelsmith spokes are still made in Milwaukee. They did, however, purchase their tooling from Asahi in Japan.

This thread is more about patriotism than cycling.

Didn't know they still were being made...John

It may simply be that Asian Communist countries have a more optimal economic system for producing bike parts.

Maybe the best way to address this flaw in the US is to migrate to a communist command-control economy.

In the same way the Christian Adventure threads were more about religious signaling.

Religious Signaling?
 

What part of my post, concerning my trip with Christian Adventures, involved 'Christian Signaling'?

The titles.

The Titles
 

Ok.... And I suppose that offends you in some way? ;)

Not at all.

I'm sure it is a great experience being in a tour that excludes Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Godless Atheist commies, etc. If you could rebuild such a community here, it would be absolutely terrific.

In what way did you got the idea that these people groups were excluded, from the tour. In fact, I rode with several from different faiths; Minite, Amish, Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, etc. All in all, the trip was a great experience. In 1988, we were all going to meet back for a tour across Nova Scotia, but for some reason the trip was cancelled.

I am old enough to remember American made bicycles. I had a Schwinn Collegiate in high school. That bike was just the most miserable hunk of junk imaginable. It was heavy and it had the magical grade of steel that both rode like a dump truck and handled like a wet noodle. And everything was some Schwinn-only proprietary standard and I couldn't even replace the crappy parts with better parts. Back then we had American made consumer products like RCA TV's, Atari consoles, Mattel toys, Timex watches, Texas Instrument calculators, Radio Shack stereos, Baldwin pianos etc, etc. And guess what? They were all garbage. The American TVs were garbage quality when compared to Sony's. Ataris were crude and the games were buggy and nothing like later Nintendos. Even our (very expensive) Apple II+ overheated all the time. TI instrument calculators were inferior to Casio. Timex watches were like crude cheap toys next to Casio watches which were properly Space Age. Revell model kits were crude trash compared to the Tamiya kits. A Radio Shack stereo looked like something from the New Stone Age when compared to a Sony Walkman of the same era (to be fair, a high water mark in human engineering). I had to fix my sister's 1981(?) Chevy Citation lots of times. This was really a disposable car because it was a nightmare to fix. They designed it with zero thoughts given to repairability.
The aforementioned Schwinn had to outsource to Japan too. At first they made a separate line called 'World, approved by Schwinn', because they thought the imports would sully the Schwinn name. But of course the imports turned out to be far higher quality than the domestic Schwinns. And eventually Schwinn outsourced most of their bikes. Mostly to Giant, which is now the biggest bike maker in the world.
Oh yeah, you can still buy an almost totally American made bicycle:
https://www.worksmancycles.com/
American made since 1898. And by the looks of it, they haven't advanced much since that time. Is this really what you want?

Fair points, but the comparison is asymmetrical because Sri Lanka (as far as I know) is not publicly clamoring for more "Made in Sri Lanka" products.

Amish, Catholic, and Coptic Orthodox are all Christian. (I don't know what Minite refers to but, if it's Mennonites, they too are Christian.)

More Sri Lanka Products
 

But workers in Sri Lanka are working and making money. In the USA we have those that would work if someone would pay them, so they could possibly afford what is being manufactured in Sri Lanka and then sent to the USA.

I am not aware of that happening either.
...I genuinely don't know why that matters to my point though.

Whether Sri Lanka is publicly pushing for more domestic produced stuff or not is beside the point. My point was that the initial comparison is the difference in production volume between a Sri Lankan facility and a US facility...and then just focuses on how little raw material or componentry comes from the US.
Those same points could be applied to the Sri Lankan factory, but it doesn't get mentioned again.

I understand what you are saying, your are saying that if there is a focus on MUSA, then it's fair to point out what is and isn't MUSA on a bike made in the US.
But a better picture of the challenges faced with domestic production could be made by instead focusing on how most all bikes built outside of China and possibly Taiwan will fade the exact same challenges as Litespeed in the US.

Even a bike made in Japan will have very few components since so much is instead made in Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc.

...or maybe I am hyper focused on something that isn't important.

What? Do you understand the concept of supply and demand?

Here's the close of the video:

"But after decades of globalization, it'll be a real slog for any company to make a bike or anything else for that matter (entirely in America). From raw material to finished product domestically, bikes are just the beginning. So, next time you see a made in America label, not assembled in America, remember that's a supply chain miracle."

The crux of the video is that the economy is globalized today, and the idea of Made in America (or anywhere else for that matter) is no longer a real possibility.

Agreed; that's the crux of the video.
Disagreed. That is not the conclusion of the video, which in fact clearly states that achieving completely made in USA is a "generational project," not an impossibility. I'd go further to say the video makes the likelihood of achieving Made in USA bikes is unlikely, but again, that's something completely different from "no longer a real possibility." It's totally possible, only the will is required...and we'll find it real quick if China decides to assert dominion over Taiwan.

Christians on Bicycles, oh my !
 

Ok, those are the religious people groups that I remember and still you seem offended that some other people groups was not allowed to participate. If I had said that I knew an Atheist and a Buddhist rode with us, would you feel better.?

I was not at all offended -- I was just setting the record straight. In response to someone asking if various non-Christian groups were represented in your ride, you listed several other groups that were represented. But, they all are, in fact, Christian groups. (Which you really should have known.)

An Atheist and a Buddhist are Christians? :foo:

Maybe you wouldn't be confused if you reviewed what was posted earlier:

You said this: "In fact, I rode with several from different faiths; Minite, Amish, Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, etc."

Presumably "etc." refers to additional Christian faiths.

Later, you said, "If I had said that I knew an Atheist and a Buddhist rode with us, would you feel better.?"

You'll admit that that's an ambiguous response. No one reading it would think you meant that an atheist (should be all lowercase) and a Buddhist did indeed ride with the group.

Also, it's surprising that you didn't mention Mennonites.

The reason we don’t do as much manufacturing here (as a proportion of GDP) in the US as they do in other countries is because we are much, much richer with a much more highly skilled and educated workforce than those nations have. Manufacturing labor is hard, honest work, but it’s no more hard and honest than the jobs most Americans already have, and it has to pay a lot less to be economical. Pulling the policy levers that would make it possible to buy an entirely made in the USA bike would amount to a massive deskilling and impoverishing of the average American worker - who would then be unable to afford that bike. Now, some people are very excited about that future and are doing their damndest to make it happen, but I don’t think they’re doing me or my family any favors at all. What happens in a glorious future world where all nations are fortunate enough to be as rich as we are today in the USA, I don’t know; bikes and other manufactured goods become very expensive, or are built entirely by robots, or perhaps we just enter a prompt on the replicator found in every home. For now, stuff is cheap for Americans because we don’t make it here. Instead, we do jobs that provide much more value and pay us a lot more money.

Anyway, that doesn’t even get into the larger question of inputs. It’s a big, interconnected world because the modern material world can’t exist with a bunch of isolated nation-states all just building their own native little widgets. This hasn’t been the state of affairs anywhere since at least the Bronze Age. The USA is blessed with an unusual abundance of resources, but we can’t get everything from here, we need. The autarkic fantasy of a fully MUSA bike is just that, a fantasy, and it’s one with a dark underbelly. If you want to see the great things that having no or very few trading partners do for a nation, just look at North Korea.

Upset
 

You are seriously upset over someone using the word, Christian. I think you are the only one that responded to my Christian Adventures thread even though you didn't respond within the tread, you decided it was best to post within another tread that had nothing to do with the CA Tour. Oh, I understand 'American Bikes' is my tread, as well. Oh well. Both threads have something to do with Bicycles. Maybe we should just talk about Bicycling. I don't want to offend you anymore.