The New American Standard

Nature blessed me with a bladder roughly the size of a Rainier Cherry. I visit the latrine many times more often than the average Joe, and since the installation of my new dual flush toilet I have been saving around 0.6 gallons per flush compared to the 1.6 gallons used per flush for the last twenty years in this housal unit. I'd wager since Saturday about 5 gallons have been saved. Not too bad.

It should come as no surprise, no surprise at all, that my new American Standard dual flush toilet tank was made in Mexico and the bowl was imported from China. Yep -- this is the new American Standard for you -- a nation comprised chiefly of has-been manufacturers, now demoralized and underemployed service sector wage slaves working in mass retail warehouses on the suburban fringes while living in bombed out, hollowed out cities -- well, this applies to those who can actually find service jobs. Wages have been flat since the end of the Great Recession -- no surprise there, as four people pining for the same job opening creates incentives for employers to pay out less. It's a seller's market in the industry of jobs.

I'm still taken aback that a 60# toilet bowl can still be more cost effective to be manufactured in China and shipped 9,200 miles to my water closet rather than somehow being manufactured here. If I wanted a dual flush unit, I had no option available to me but to buy imported as there was only one model available.

I think the name American Standard for a product made in China is perfectly acceptable, as it is the most correct designation for all the things we purchase these days. And you can see American Standard's point -- good fucking luck trying to sell a toilet in California called a Shih Tzuhan Standard even though this would be a more correct name. We buy Chinese made junk, yes, but only when we can conveniently ignore that it's Chinese by pretty packaging with the word American in 150 Times New Roman font on the box.

I still cannot believe that a 60# porcelain bowl is still cheaper to import. Well, I suppose my Buy China program had a significant addition this weekend. Recall that my goal with my 2% payroll tax deduction for 2011 was to buy imported shit from China, further eroding our manufacturing base and making this nation effectively poorer...although I'm doing OK, as I'm in a professional position actually manufacturing something that cannot be outsourced.

I'd be an idiot to save this 2% social security windfall, because not only would I not receive any return on it thanks to our Fed-engineered investment bank bailouts and 0% interest rates, it will only work against me in 2028 when I try to retire and my assets will be deemed "substantial," reducing my Social Security benefit under means-testing that will sure to be installed by then to manage the crippling insolvency of our government.

I'm glad to have bought a Chinese shitter, glad to have helped turn a former $19/hour American Standard factory employee into a $13/hour big-box forklift operator moving pallets of Chinese made American Standard toilet bowls. Glad to help!

This is the New American Standard.