Wow ! This thread really took off. Well, I guess I am in the tiny minority who believes US engineers, designers, and workers are the best in the world, certainly they are the most productive. I own an MTD snow blower which I originally purchased in 1995, when we also lived in Maine. MTD is an American company but I imagine they manufacture some or all of their units overseas, driven there by everything that drove most of our companies overseas for assembly of their products. It has served me well for all these years. Just recently I took it in to the local power equipment guy and told him to "go through it" and fix anything that needs fixing, which included it's first ever oil change. The bill was $82. The thing starts immediately, warms up fast, and slings whatever mix of snow we have as far as I need it.
I feel obligated to weigh in on the CEO bashing branch of this thread as well. Personally, I don't really care much about how much money CEOs of real companies earn so long as they run their company efficiently, pay their employees well, take care of their employees with benefits, and turn a profit that in the case of public companies, is rewarded by a healthy stock performance. What does bother me a lot though is when a CEO "retires" after x number of years when the company declined in all measures of performance, employees lost their jobs and pensions, entire small towns are devastated by loss of a manufacturing facility, and he/she walks out with a separation bonus of many millions of dollars. That scenario sucks, but it is much more frequent than one can imagine.