People in this thread don’t realise it, but they are actively discussing the downfall of the USA as a world power in real time.
A very rough timeline:
Post WWII manufacturing surplus.
“We’re #1!” American exceptionalism delusion begins.
Cold war and baby boomers, the coke-fuelled '80s and all that stuff.
Shifting away from a manufacturing base to “tech”. Detroit ain’t what it used to be.
Tech boom, more manufacturing shifts overseas.
Tech bust, manufacturing doesn’t really come back.
Agriculture stalls and needs to be propped up.
TechBros emerge.
Government becomes a bit unpredictable towards outside parties (Trump Era 1).
Government stabilises for a few years (Biden) other countries breathe a sigh of relief.
TechBros gain more power/influence over government decisions.
Government becomes worryingly unpredictable to outside parties and trade partners (Trump Era 2).
“Uneccessary funding” is dropped and the USA loses a huge amount of soft power overseas.
Full on grifitng and blatant market manipulation by party leaders begins. Reasoned political debate is long gone, you’re with us or against us prevails.
Instability upsets government income streams. Government pisses off trade partners by tariffing everything and tries to get into a tariff war with China, who says “that’s just stupid” and doesn’t call their bluff.
Economy shifts further away from primary industries towards technology, but it’s technology manufactured overseas. This becomes a problem when overseas manufacturers refuse to “just eat the tariffs” for some reason, choosing instead to pass them on to buyers in the US.
Government fucks around with Iran and finds out, pissing off the nearly the entire rest of the world who gets oil from there, and spiking prices at home.
Government props up the remaining local tech and manufacturing industry to ensure sovereignty over military supply needs.
Government feels a bit of a pinch from Iran locally and goes looking for more money and resources and drops in on Venezuela for some of that sweet oil. Via a profit sharing deal with major oil companies, of course.
TechBros inflate the market in a frenzy of circular purchasing/funding on the back of technology easily duplicated by other parties worldwide.
(We are here)
TechBros bubble pops and kills the entire market because government forced the major funds to participate in TechBro delusions.
Local manufacturing is gone. Agriculture is running at a loss. Trade partners don’t trust the USA and are actively forming other alliances with other countries. The USA is a service economy with no cash to pay for those services. Political parties polarise even further.
Inflation spikes, job losses across the board as businesses from all sectors can’t afford to do anything.
??? - your guess is as good as mine, but it won’t be everyone skipping through a field of daisies.
Certification marks are just extra silkscreen printing applied at the factory in China. In my field I’ve seen plenty of melted UL marked relays that were clearly cheap clones of the original.
If you’re buying a 5 dollar adapter off Amazon and it has those marks, you can pretty much assume that they mean nothing.