Roger clocks out at the end of his shift at the North Carolina furniture factory and changes into his jeans (made in Vietnam) and Budweiser t-shirt (made in China). He gets in his Dodge (made of parts from around the world) and heads home.

Life sure is better having a job, thanks to the Buy American program, backed up by taxes Americans now pay on the cheaper imported furniture they used to prefer. Roger arrives at his home (made with Canadian timber) and gets a cold beer (aluminum from Iceland) and a chicken drumstick (butchered in China!) from the refrigerator (made in Taiwan). He turns on the TV (made in Japan) and gets ready for an evening of entertainment (made in California). But first he takes a break to use the toilet (made in Mexico).

Buy American worked. Now that American consumers, rich and poor alike, have to pay more for their furniture, Roger enjoys a better quality of life with more security. He never really worried about getting food to eat, having access to a refrigerator and indoor plumbing, or losing access to a warm, dry place to sleep. His greatest fear was having to sleep on someone else's sofa and share their toilet, and maybe getting sick and not having access to excellent, modern medical care.

On the other side of the world, a Chinese furniture maker is now out of work, and has moved back to the village where he sleeps on a mat on the floor, under a leaky roof, and urinates in a hole outside.

So far so good, Roger is taken care of. But what about American producers of textiles, lumber, refrigerators, and toilets? Fair's fair, Roger, you should be buying American too. America has the resources and ingenuity to produce all of these goods; all have in fact been produced in America. But Roger isn't getting rich making furniture, and the reason he selected imported products for his home, though it sometimes meant compromising on quality, was to save money. Roger is going to have to give some things up in order to Buy American.

If the "buy local" idea is a good one, we should go all the way and refuse to take advantage of the efficiency that a country like Iceland has in smelting aluminium. Iceland should grow it's own food and manufacture its own cars, too. So should Fiji! When a Fiji native buys a German car, that means fewer manufacturing jobs for native islanders. There's plenty of space for an automobile plant on Fiji, what's stopping them?