When it comes to disposable razors, if you want to Buy American, Schick is the brand to buy. Schick is an American-owned company and most of their razors are made in America, too.

Not all Schick razors are made here, but you'll find that most of them are. Even the imported ones have some U.S. components it seems. For example, Schick Hydro 5 disposable razors are completely made in USA, but the Hydro 5 non-disposables are imported with U.S.-made blades in them.

BIC, on the other hand, used to make their razors in the United States, but now they are all made in either France or Greece. The fact that BIC makes many of their disposable razors in France is really no accident, since BIC is a French-owned company (Societe Bic is the company's full corporate name). Who knew? BIC is such a popular brand name, most Americans probably assume they are based in America too, but they're not.

You might be shocked to know just how many familiar brand names are also owned by the French. Maybelline, Danone, Gold Bond, Unisom, Selsun Blue, Icy Hot, Rolaids, Aspercreme, and Allegra are all owned by companies based in France. Many of these brands are owned by French multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi.

But when it comes to disposable razors, it's not so easy to buy American-made. Most of the brands you might see on the shelf at your local drug store or supermarket are American-owned brands, but very few of those companies make their razors in the USA.

That's why I'm a big fan (and a supporting consumer) of Schick. Not only is Schick an American-owned company, but their profits stay in America, and the taxes on those profits are paid to the U.S. Treasury.

With BIC, any profits they accrue goes to reward foreign owners, foreign investors, and foreign stockholders and shareholders. Taxes paid on profits accumulated by BIC's French owners are paid to the French Government Treasury.

Does it really matter where the profits go and where the taxers are paid? Of course it does. Consider that (according to Bloomberg's Business Week) over three-fourths of all federal spending goes towards paying for Social Security, Medicare, education, parks, roads and bridges, farm subsidies, national defense, and to pay down the national debt.

Few Americans are necessarily for more government spending just for the sake of more spending, but (almost) all Americans can get behind and support the above expenditures for our benefit. After all, we've all paid into Social Security, so it's not unnatural that we would expect to be entitled to a return on what we contributed. Anything less could easily be classified as an unfunded mandate on the American people.

When it comes to saving Social Security, which seems to be a constant calling card of certain politicians, few really address a real solution to solving the crisis. The answer to saving Social Security is to tax each and every company that outsources American jobs.

Here's a real life example, and one that easily applies to why we should be supporting American-made brands. Let's say 100,000 American jobs are outsourced to other countries, which is easily evident since there are at least 100,000 workers in China in the toy industry alone.

Now apply a very conservative annual salary on those jobs of $40,000. Since 15% gets paid into the Social Security fund (7 ? percent by the company employing the American worker and 7 ? percent by the American worker) a major depletion of Social Security funds occurs when a company moves existing American jobs offshore.

The company is no longer required to pay their 7 ? percent since their workers are no longer employed in the United States, and the American worker can no longer pay their 7 ? percent into the Social Security fund either since he or she is in the unemployment line.

So let's do the math: 100,000 outsourced jobs times $40,000 a year equals $4 trillion in lost American wages. When you consider that 15 percent on that $4 trillion is no longer going into the Social Security fund, you realize that fund lost $600 million in revenue in one year because of a nearly non-existent domestic toy industry.

So now you know how to save Social Security and virtually every other American program advocated by "We the People" with our tax dollars: Tax every job that is outsourced.

You can easily support American-owned companies that refuse to outsource American jobs and therefore make American jobs and the resulting tax revenue benefits for working Americans unobtainable.

So if you support American profits, jobs, and tax revenue, get Schick and flick your BIC just one more time (right into the trash). You'll be glad you did, and your country will, too.

1921