WhisperPower vs Onan

If you can find them.

Absolutely agree with everything you're saying. You get what you pay for. Seems the cure is simple. Buy quality and be willing to pay what that costs. I can't blame a person (or business) for selling me garbage if all I'm willing to pay is garbage. Same as if an employer only wants to pay for entry level he shouldn't be surprised that he gets entry level results. All most companies care about is making the most profit. That's the business model today. Watch Shark Tank some time and note whether they ask about the quality of a product. It's all about how cheaply the item can be produced and what the markup is. All my businesses were small, personal, high quality. It's how I chose to do business. I was more concerned with respecting the person I saw in the mirror. That's not the norm today.

The problem is, in many cases, there ISN'T a quality product to replace the once quality product that has been cheapened. Who makes a submersible bilge pump above 1100 gph besides RULE? Besides cheapening the product, they keep increasing the price.....but no other quality brand to replace it with. There are many instances of this.

I think it's actually fair to say that Americans are delivering the cheap products that the American market is demanding.
They just happen to source them in China (or wherever - PRC isn't the cheapest manufacturer around anymore, in fact).
Blaming China for that is akin to blaming workers of the 737 Max assembly lines for having made Boeing a company to be ashamed of.

When you can't find what you need you create it. Go to the bone yards, salvage old bilge pumps and rebuild them. That's how businesses are born. But if all the world is willing to pay for is garbage that's what business will produce. The market drives industry. Nobody is going to produce a product on which they lose money, and stockholders today consider anything less than a 2/3 markup to be losing money. It used to be 1/3 was considered good. I consider any profit good, but that why I'm not rich.

Agreed, but to some extent the use of better/different parts depends also on the builders' choices.
The pic below shows one installation combining bilge pump control and alarm, using the simplest and most reliable floating switches available.
BUT, they are meant for industrial applications, not for boats.
So, aside from requiring a custom bracket, they aren't an easy catalogue choice for boatbuilders.
And pretty sure they are not what buyers look for, at boat shows.
On the other hand, these things are still working just as well as 17 years ago, when the boat was built.

You're absolutely correct. It's become very popular to blame China for all the ills of the world cause we turned our manufacturing over to them in exchange for cheap labor. But more and more of these products are no longer produced there because they're no longer the cheapest. We're now seeing more and more products from places like Bangladesh. Our market rates price as their #1 concern. Quality is way down the list even though we'll complain and complain about it. The average wage in China today is $1,071 per month. In Bangladesh it's $60. Just imagine how much they'll care about making a high quality product. We're in a race to the bottom.

Marathon is now made in China to. That's what is on my Phasor generator, Marathon with a made in China label.

I miss the good old Lovett pumps, nice and heavy and just sat in place.

Thank you for my laugh of the day.

What questions are you going to ask. 'Is your product a POS?' lol. If you ask where it's manufactured will you feel better to hear it's from where workers are paid even less than in China? Virtually anything you buy today is returnable. Seems to me the only way to know what you're getting is to get it and check it.

You loved it up till the moment you found out where it came from. That's funny. Don't worry though. In another couple of years it'll probably be made in Bangladesh. They're not communists. They just have people making handkerchiefs one day an precision instruments the next for the same no pay.

And the motor is a Kabota,
Which I’m quite sure is not made in Kansas!

It's already a good thing if they actually have "people" meant as men and women, rather than children.

You just keep thinking that if it helps you sleep.

A country of origin is often a reflection on quality. Many of our discussions document this fact, but we need to make an effort to avoid subjects that are inflammatory in nature. These sparring matches are giving the rest of us a black-eye. Knock it off knuckleheads!

I recently bought the best reviewed and best rated tractor in its class for my lawn. It's Made In America by an American company. The motor is made in Korea. The frame and several other components are made in China or other countries, but since it's assembled in America it qualifies as Made In America. America is globalized. Face it. Foreign companies today have plants in the U.S. so they can blur the line between domestic and foreign built or their parts are manufactured around the world and assembled here so they can wear the Made In America label. Good luck finding a truly American built anything. Care to guess where the wiring for your American built boats comes from? How about your shafts, rudders, appliances, etc., etc. If a company puts out garbage let's hear about it, but ALL countries put out cheap garbage including the U.S., and as long as industry seeks out the cheapest labor it'll continue to be so. Our political leaders have recently demonized China after praising them when it served their political purposes. They do it to take the spotlight off their own failures. ('I'm not so bad compared to....'). It's wrong and stupid, because the end result is that Americans and those who aspire to become Americans are hurt and threatened by it because of their ethnicity. So if you've gotten garbage from a company let's here about it, but to denigrate an entire country and it's people is wrong. It's bigotry and shows ones own stupidity, and yes it's political.