How do I justify the opinion that I, a liberal Democrat with a wide interest in internation affairs, am forming that it is time to limit my comfortable level of consumption to items and services that are produced near to home?

Silicon Valley surveys predict that 500.000 American service-sector jobs will be moving overseas to join the manufacturing sector which has already booked for low-wage, regulationless profitability. Large chunk of the economy that. Will the jobs left onshore be sufficient to employ the high school and college student who will be leaving my household within the next 6 years?

I'm beyond forming protectionist opinions, and all the way to looking for practical ways to screen the products that I buy and services that I use for American content. I don't shop at Wal Mart, but I don't intend to and I can't afford to consume only American-made.

Even the highest skill level of engineering at the most cutting edge technology companies is being performed by an international work force supplemented by bargain level workers from developing countries. The solution may be to create home-grown engineers and, on the whole, that may be what needs to be done. One problem with that, locally, is that the dominant company in my home town makes computers with the imported labor force because "we can't get local talent with skills that are advanced enough to perform for us". Then the company holds my local government hostage to a demand for property tax relief when it locates its factories in my town. Schools are financed by local propery taxes and lo and behold these are the same schools that are going to an eight month school year because they can't finance nine months for above-mentioned high school student. Bummer