Obviously, the statement is modeled on the old saw "What this country needs is a good 5-cent cigar". In actual fact, a $20 Realforce - low enough to match in price the cheap rubber dome keyboards out there - would be entirely sufficient to solve this country's problems!
Is this an impossible dream? Well, making the keyboard capacitative just means changing the electronics. Putting springs under every dome shouldn't be that bad. There's no reason why the keyboard could not have just a single sheet of rubber domes like ordinary rubber dome keyboards.
So all we have to do is wait for Topre's patents to expire!
Whereas a $20 buckling-spring keyboard, or a $20 beam-spring keyboard, is likely an impossible dream, as those things have too many little parts, and thus are too complicated to make.
Although, no doubt, a made-in-China buckling-spring keyboard could be under $50 - but experience hints that it would be unlikely to be much good. And even for $20 people wouldn't buy it, because they would complain it was too noisy.
China has very high quality goods, it's just that most of them are consumed in the country. Made in Japan vs Made in China doesn't really matter anymore.
The SONY PS3 was manufactured in China. It's certainly true that quality goods are made in China, even for export. The trouble is, though, that with exported Chinese goods sold directly by a Chinese firm, as opposed to Chinese-made goods made to the specifications of a Western firm - it's difficult for us to find the quality ones, and it's difficult for those Chinese companies that do care about quality to overcome their country's bad reputation in this area, so I'm not surprised they stick to the domestic market.
