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Ryan Paugh graduated from Penn State in 2006 with a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business. After working in corporate communications, freelance writing and reporting, he co-founded 
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BOSTON (Reuters) — Even as some economic commentators fret about the rising trade deficit, U.S. college students remain big fans of U.S. products like LG mobile telephones, Adidas sneakers and Lego toys.
Or so they think.
South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc., Germany’s Adidas AG and Denmark’s Lego are among more than a dozen well-known consumer brands that U.S. college students misidentified the nationality of, according to a survey released Friday. (CNN Money.com)
As if we didn’t spend enough time obsessing about “stuff.” Now it’s a dilemma if we don’t know what country manufactures it?
According to a recent survey, college-aged millennials don’t know (or don’t care) where their favorite products come from. “This can be important economically since survey respondents tend to associate particular countries with producing high-quality merchandise in particular categories.”
Is this really an issue?
We live in a global community. Products are developed, manufactured and sold in diverse locations around the globe. If you ask me where my LG phone came from, I wouldn’t say South Korea. I’d say Best Buy.
Think of it this way. Jack Daniels is made in Lynchburg, Tennessee. In college, I spent way too much time nursing a bottle of whiskey to know this information. If you spend that much time coddling your LG cell phone, your Adidas sneakers or your old collection of Lego’s, you have bigger problems than me.
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That is the single dumbest article I have ever read! I can’t believe someone took the time to research that junk.
Between you and “Tyson,” it’s no wonder businesses are dragging their feet to hire Millenials. The apathy of product-hungry collegians who know only that their phone comes from Best Buy is at the heart of some of the most abominable economic inequality in recorded history. Yeah, we live in a global economy, but it’s not a very egalitarian one. The crappy treatment/compensation of the VAST majority of the folks who actually make the gadgets we think we need in the west is a real injustice. It’s why cell-phones and other margin-rich tech-gadgets get marketed to so many college students: they’ve got money burning holes in their pockets but lack the brain-power to question the ethics behind buying more crap. Tyson “can’t believe someone took the time to research that junk?” I’m not surprised. He probably - like -doesn’t see the big deal behind Darfur or the war in Iraq or presidential elections. Somebody pass me the beer bong. Hooray for America’s student-scholars.
Mike:
Putting blame on the millennial generation’s buying power for the mistreatment workers around the world has pretty much ruined your credibility. The power of change lies in the hands of the money-grubbing business leaders that are trying to save a dime. It’s irresponsible to think otherwise.
My apathy has nothing to do with the torment of sweat shop workers or their families who suffer, but with the fact that we live in a global economy and whatever country develops a product has little to do with where it’s manufactured and sold.
Some people will take a cheap shot wherever they can though…
Heh. Yeah, I’m not sure any of that’s 100% accurate, especially the last paragraph.
A) What would cause the money-grubbing business leaders to change? Removing customer demand (i.e. conscientious consumers quit buying their sweat-shop garbage). That same line of logic suggests that addicts aren’t to blame for the drug problem since they aren’t the ones bringing the drugs in. Make sense?
B) The country that develops a product is often not the same country as the one the ends up housing the production, thanks to the prevalence of outsourcing and offshoring in this global economy. You think your apathy has “nothing to do with” it. I think it’s obvious that your apathy (and mine - ’cause I’m guilty of it to some extent too) fosters it.
C) I didn’t realize “online dialogue” equals “cheap shot.” My bad. I guess I don’t really understand the nature of blogs.
Mike:
A) You can’t halt demand, no matter how convenient that would be. Sweatshops have been around way before my generation gained buying-power and the only way we learned to stop them is by exploiting them for the money-grubbing bastards they are. Do we go after every drug addict? Or the drug dealer? The dealer! Because it produces results.
B) Read the article. The brands we are talking about are not US-based companies outsourcing to foreign sweatshops. They’re quality foreign goods developed in foreign companies. Kudos to them! But why should I be expected to know the geography of every product I buy when I know where to get it?
C) Online dialogue is great, I love it. Even when it proves me wrong. What I have no tolerance for is the “anti-millennial� finger pointer who makes ridiculous generalizations based on other’s opinions. Don’t be that guy…
It’s not apathy or an amoral society, it’s economics. People act on their best interests.
Let’s get extreme here.
I can pay $100 for a “fair trade” cellphone, or $25 for a sweatshop one. At the end of the day, do I care about a kid in China, or do I care about myself?
News broke that Apple made some iPods in sweatshops, and guess what, iPods still crossed the 100 million mark last year.
Morality is how the world “should be”, economics is how the world actually is. Market forces are a bitch.
I’m on Ryan’s side with this one, and I think most of the posters here have missed his point entirely.
The title of this post made me laugh. It’s funny because it’s something I’ve thought on more than one occasion when I’ve heard people banging on about where something was made: “Who cares?” Because what I’m really wondering is, “I wonder why you care? No, *really*??!”
Despite Mike’s very worthy list of noble causes, I don’t for a minute believe that this CNN article, or indeed most people generally regardless of their generation, give a crap about the exploitation of workers in countries with less humane labour laws, war torn/ civil unrest, etc. Because if they did, we (and by we I mean everyone) would do something about it, something more than just whinge and buy the odd stylishly marketed, fair trade t-shirt. What this CNN article comes down to is very thinly veiled narrow-minded protectionism and hysteria, stirred up out of an ignorance of anyone who is not like us and the very natural fear people have of losing their jobs.
Fine. “Like, whatever” (that was for Mike’s benefit). But what CNN and co. are too stymied to realise is this is not about one generation saying they don’t care about these worthy issues. This is about one generation refusing to stand back and watch society PRETEND it cares. We have more than enough brain power to consider the ethics, but we’ve also figured out that finger-pointing articles like this, and tirades like Mikes, don’t help anyone. We may not yet have effected the changes needed to tackle the issues ourselves, but you know what, millenials will come a lot closer to it than Gen Y-ers and baby boomers (we were born in the 80s remember? Give us a chance… ), simply because acknowledging the situation for what it is brings us a heck of a lot closer to resolving it. That’s not apathy, that’s maturity and realism. Don’t dump on us for refusing to admire the emporer’s new clothes.
right: correction: by “most of the posters here” I meant Mike. Sorry Tyson and Dave.
I think Sarah raises some great points, but I’m unclear about one or two things. They’re more abstract, general philosophical things, I think. I wonder if Sarah’s “acknowledging the situation for what it is” is similar to Dave’s shoulder-shrugging acceptance of “how the world actually is.” I don’t mean that in a mean way; I just really wonder if acknowledgment followed by acceptance (i.e. “doing nothing to combat a negative situation”) is really a sign of “maturity and realism,” or if it is instead the apathy I’m so afraid of.
My sense is that relativism in general (not just the relativism of Millenials, but of everyone), that sort of lackadaisical “Eh, life sucks. Get a helmet.” attitude wherein everyone is “right” in their own way, but “nobody’s as right as me” is really to blame for the problem we’re talking about.
“Yeah, but I want my new BlackBerry for a little less money,” says Dave. Well, I want less people suffering in the world. It’s unfortunate, but I think that Dave wins. I think the majority of people accept crappy situations and let it roll off them with Dave’s “Marketing is a bitch” kind of attitude. Does that make it “true?” Sure. Does that make it good or right? Not even a little.
Just to be clear, I’m not ragging on Millenials, Gen’s X r Y or Boomers here. The problem as I see it is one for all of us to consider; it’s larger than any one generation. I just happened to see it come up on Ryan’s and Ryan’s blog (which I regularly read and enjoy), so I thought I’d put my thoughts out there.
Mike:
We’re glad you enjoy the blog. Keep reading and commenting.
- the Guys
“Does that make it good or right?”
Things get murky when you tell people what to think is “right”.
I buy the cheaper cell phone to increase my disposable income, because I’m saving up for a digital camera. But maybe I’m buying it because a lot of my income is going towards my mom’s medication, which she needs to live. Tell me, what is “right” now?
This is the last time I’ll check this thread, but I’ll throw this out there:
Say a chinese kid gets paid $0.50 per cellphone right now. Ok, then let’s bump it up to $7 an hour, more “humane” standards.
The economy of that city now gets messed up, because all of a sudden people who make cellphones now make as much as their doctors and lawyers, which opens up a whole nuther can of worms…