Isn't this exactly what is now happening? American companies are
outsourcing their production to 3-rd world metric countries and the products
being made their are metric. they are being imported into the US, albeit
with inch labels. But this amounts to nothing more then hidden metric.
The members of the ACWM must go out of their way to check the imported
products to see how metric or FFU they are and become infuriated when
products once made in the US to FFU are now made somewhere else to metric.
The posting from Han was dated in 2001, 3 years ago. I wonder how much has
changed in our favour since that time.
Euric
> The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) is a respected government
watchdog.
> Its Metric Report of 1990 summarized the major economic burdens of a
forced
> U.S. metrication, and devastated pro-metric arguments with careful
analysis:
> Imports of metric products would increase because metric products required
> for U.S. conversion would have to be obtained from other countries.
> Furthermore, due to the additional costs of conversion, U.S. products
would
> be more expensive than imported products that are already metric. Foreign
> countries would benefit from broadened markets and new economies of scale
> due to increased production and lower operating costs. The United States
> would also be flooded with customary products produced by other countries
to
> meet the continuing demand by the public for goods during the conversion
> period.
> A pamphlet from Americans for Customary Weight and Measure (ACWM), a
> grassroots organization, passes along the warning: "Thousands of workers
> would lose their jobs and older workers would be displaced. Metric
> conversion would require massive retraining and would deprive the country
of
> workers with valuable experience and the intuitive feel for measurement
upon
> which craftsmen, mechanics, engineers and many other workers depend"
> ("Realities of Metrication" by Thomas A. Hannigan, International
Brotherhood
> of Electrical Workers, 1977).
