And... who's going to verify/certify/ensure that those appliances are actually as energy efficient as claimed?

Consumer Reports?

Who says they are the only candidate? The government has the NHTSA, while the private sector has the more rigorous IIHS. UL has done this kind

Speaking of UL... you realize that they are one of those who does the testing under the EngeryStar program, right? ex: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ul.com%2Fservices%2Fen...

If the program goes away tomorrow, no doubt they'd simply close their doors and never test energy efficiency again.

You aren't going to convince anyone anywhere of "Chinese quality". It's an oxymoron and everyone knows it. That's the thing China will never get out from under. They spent too many decades cutting corners, frequently illegally, so now "Made in China" means cheap garbage.

Communism doesn't work. It's been tried repeatedly. Is it gonna be different this time somehow?

Even if a professor is paid pittance, they still want to eat and feed their family. What is wrong with an academic wanting to make money? Whats wrong with pointing that out?

a driver would need to buy 1,000 gallons of gas in a year, or about 80 gallons/week.

But 1000/52=19.23

No. You are trying to make it sound like if some children are being employed in dangerous jobs then they all are. What youve shown is that when they are actually employed to do dangerous things it makes the news and people get arrested. You know what isn't newsworthy? "Teen Gets Summer Job, Goes Home Unharmed", cause it happens millions of times every day.

That's not what a centrally planned economy means at all.

If that worked there wouldnt be apps and plugins specifically designed to show the actual country of origin for Amazon sellers. It's quite popular to lie about that. I was surprised recently about a tool for my truck that was in Texas and then it took a month to get to me from Guangzhou.

Wouldn't that give incentive to set up a more local factory? Without tariffs a domestic manufacturing startup has no chance competing against foreign labor costs. It's not that we're losing cheap items. We are funneling our money into foreign pockets with far worse labor laws. Our manufacturing jobs were sold to the lowest bidder.

Because making you look it up shows you that all those examples you cited are for people already breaking the law. It's a dishonest argument. If you need examples from three different states than it's not exactly rampant is it? Those obviously should not have happened. So it stands that any legit probably looks like what described. It's ok for kids to work.

Go to the Midwest. There are factories all over the place.

What role do the teens in a meat packing plant play? My parents both worked in meat packing in the 80s and 90s before their plant burned down. I can tell you having hired minors (for a grocery store job) that the list of things they can't do is long. No power equipment, nothing sharp, no bad chemicals, etc. I had to sign a form basically saying it's my fault if they get hurt. My guess is they'd be in a cafeteria or cleaning or something.

You state that as if everyone in CA makes $104k/year. How bad is the income disparity compared to other states?

That's a stupid thing to say. Liberal and conservative are relative to the system they refer to. I can use parmesan on my pizza liberally or conservatively and it speaks nothing of anything else being the same.

If a politician in Europe were to advocate for gun rights and ownership it would be liberal in the context of their governments.

I am aware. It was par for the course to make stuff up to make people feel like they aren't helpless.