What is wrong with Mercury?

[David - WI]

China just bought a huge swath of land in Texas... can't be any good reason for that.

“You’ve got a former People’s Liberation Army general billionaire who has bought over 130,000 acres of Texan land, including a giant wind farm in an area where there isn’t particularly a lot of wind but happens to be right beside a very sensitive U.S. military installation,” Bass said.

https://www.worldtribune.com/former-...ir-force-base/

[XstreamVking]

You want to support communist's, go ahead. I go out of my way to buy American goods. If it costs more, so be it. Just bought a speed queen washer, cost more sure. Will last 20+ yrs. Made in the USA. You can have the chinese junk. It may last a couple of years. What they make is "disposable". The logic of buying cheap disposable stuff over good USA made goods is the reason we are in the mess we find ourselves in today. . No doubt about it.

[TooStroked]

You want to support communist's, go ahead. I go out of my way to buy American goods. If it costs more, so be it. Just bought a speed queen washer, cost more sure. Will last 20+ yrs. Made in the USA. You can have the chinese junk. It may last a couple of years. What they make is "disposable". The logic of buying cheap disposable stuff over good USA made goods is the reason we are in the mess we find ourselves in today. . No doubt about it.

I do not try to "support communists." You might be surprised how many components in your "assembled in the USA" Speed Queen come from other countries - including China - though. A friend of mine owns a Speed Queen distributor and we have one in the basement. They do make top notch stuff. I will agree with you there.

[XstreamVking]

Lot of parts we cannot get, come from china. That's the point I made on my previous post. GOAL: 100% made in the USA. If we just became independent from outsourced stuff and made our own, we could pick and choose what we want to buy from overseas. Not be stuck in the situation we are in now being at their mercy. And commies have no mercy, ask any chinese citizen, they will tell you a thing or two about their family members disappearing one night after talking bad about the govt., or complaining to a snitch about their job. Are these the kind of dictators we want to buy from? Oh, hell no I say.

[mr fun]

lets see ,,, a country that has unleashed a plague on the rest of the world as a means of biological warfare to dominate the global economy and cut back exports to the global economy ,,, who comes to mind. Fun Out

[TooStroked]

Lot of parts we cannot get, come from china. That's the point I made on my previous post. GOAL: 100% made in the USA. If we just became independent from outsourced stuff and made our own, we could pick and choose what we want to buy from overseas.

Laudable goal, but unfortunately impossible from a practical standpoint. For instance, Lithium is very popular these days due to the proliferation - mainly driven by our own government - of battery powered vehicles. (It's a key ingredient in batteries.) We don't have any of it and the little bit we do have is what I'll just call "environmentally unfriendly" to get out of the ground. Oops. So your goal / solution sounds simple, but unfortunately it isn't.

[JR IN JAX]

I find it interesting how many self proclaimed "supply chain experts" on the internet blame Just in Time (JIT) practices for everything that's wrong with supply chains these days. Virtually every one of these folks also proposes that if we went back to the "good old days" of warehouses filled with inventory, none of these problems would exist. They conveniently forget how many of the parts in those warehouses were defective, lost, out of date or just plain the wrong parts. Oh, and they cost a bloody fortune for all of those reasons and more. Trust me, I spent 36 years in manufacturing and I've been there, done that and got the t-shirt.

The truth is that today's world is truly a global economy and nobody can survive without everybody else. There are some products that can only be sourced in one or two places in the whole world. The bigger problem is companies seeking short term gains by sourcing everything in China. The US has done a stellar job of chasing business there by making US based manufacturing more and more (and about to get way more) expensive. An unexpected - and hopefully once in a lifetime - problem showed everybody the weaknesses of a global economy. This is not a simple problem and there is no simple solution.

They interviewed the CEO of the largest IC CHIP MFG and he blamed the short-sided American Mfgs expecting the 4% of the chips [that don't go into Cell phones] to be supplied to them anytime they need them. He said Toyota was the exception. Years ago when I was working with cutting edge automation companies, I learned that chips had to be ordered well in advance with a Definite quantity. The Chip Mfgs with build yours and then retool to build another type/another customer's.

[XstreamVking]

I will end this game of tail chasing by standing my ground and insisting that if we are going to survive in this world, we must be independent as a country. China has no good intent for anyone. Doing business with them and relying on them for critical goods is like the story of the wolf and a sheep discussing what's for dinner...

[JR IN JAX]

I can not find anything/anywhere that is on the shelf. I too have a garage full of "wrong" props from past purchases.

[4Speed]

Went to pick up a 1/2 gallon of Crown Royal last weekend and the liquor store didn't have any, only the smaller bottles. Guy behind the counter said they can't get the glass for the half gallons - that's pretty bad when you talk about supply & demand.

[Will hedrick]

A supply plant in tx. Burnt a few months ago, that is why we are having a resin shortage, not only in the boat world but try to go buy a bathtub right now, next to impossible, apparently it was the only plant in the US as it supplied to the entire north America, so every thing that uses resin is struggling around the board, same thing with nail on electrical boxes and not to mention a roll of 1000' 12-2 wire, which you could buy at lowes a few months back for 300$ is now 600$

[David]

I can not find anything/anywhere that is on the shelf. I too have a garage full of "wrong" props from past purchases.

I don’t think of my props as wrong, just options to try. I can have fun and go fast with any of them

[TraceF3]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words .

In short , here was the solution to most of our problems ...

Have the Earth's poles reversed today?????? Chaz has actually posted something meaningful? And factual? Can this be true... or are my eyes deceiving me??????

[bigbore]

Must be bowling ball season/there to busy to work on outboards.

[HStream1]

All you need is a Dubai address and youll get what you ordered Cat Quick.