Susan Hogarth wrote:

USENET READER wrote:


C G wrote:


USENET READER wrote:
...

Almost everything in Harbor Freight (except for the reconditioned
DeWalt tools) is from China. The stuff is garbage and usually dies
after a short period of time. Grinders and drills come with extra
electric motor brushes which almost always get lost by the time you
need them - and you will. HF always tries to sell you an extended
warranty program, and most people I know don't buy them - even though
for all intents and purposes, if you buy the EW, you can bring back
the tool and swap it for a new one anytime the older one doesn't
work. So other than the time you lose always gong to HF to exchange
tools, that does seem like a good deal. How can American companies
compete with that?


They can't as long as American consumers puy the cheapest product they
can find. IMO, Harbor Freight should not even be in business, but as
long as people keep buying the junk, they'll survive.

It's a vicious cycle - people's wages don't keep up with inflation, so
they either look for cheaper stuff or they have no other choice. ...


Really? So then why have rates of ownership of items such as cars, TVs,
other consumer electronics, major appliances, and (most likely) power tools
gone *up*? It's not that people are forced to 'settle' for cheaper goods
than they were buying before - it's that whole new classes of people are
now empowered to *be* buyers for things such as dishwashers and jig saws.
Those people are often going to buy their first lathe from Harbor Freight,
just as they will buy their first DVD player from Wal-Mart.

They buy the stuff on credit - which is too easy to get and then when
you lose your job you can't pay the debt, so you used to be able to
declare bankruptcy, but the banks bought off Bush so that it was harder
to go bankrupt.


...
If the government enforced it's immigration laws, fined or arrested
employers for hiring illegals, shipped the illegals back over the
border, and sealed the border up with higher walls that couldn't be cut
through or climbed over. ...


Were you going somewhere with this sentence? It seems to end abruptly.

That the people who bought and paid for the GOP (mostly) and some token
Democrats don't want to slow down the influx of cheap illegal immigrant
labor, because it holds down the labor costs. The downside to that is
increasing the flow of illegal drugs and potential for terrorist
infintration over the boarder.


... My friends work hard, work smart, work
careful, and do good quality work. They pay there self-employment FICA,
state and federal taxes, they pay their insurance, and they buy good
quality american-made tools when they can. They just keep getting
underbid by companies that hire illegals.


Maybe if their own government wasn't robbing them blind they could compete
with free labor.

Taxes are the cost of living in a free society. And they are getting
robbed blind because the rich pukes are getting their taxes lowered to
the point that they won't end up paying their fair share.
...
The American consumer isn't always choosing the cheapest product -
sometimes it's all the consumer can find. When a company like Lowe's
can buy cheap chinese made crap for 10% of what they pay Marshalltown,
and can sell it for half of what an American made product sells for,
they will not want to have so much money tied up in inventory and they
realize that they can make more money selling crap that falls apart and
needs to be repurchased more often.


God, what bellyaching! *Cheap* power tools now are better than the
*expensive* power tools of a generation ago - and anyone can easily enough
order power tools at whatever quality level he chooses to afford. And why
would someone want to spend a bunch more for a tool like a drill that will
last 10 years, when in five years the newer drills will probably be vastly
improved and he'll want one of those anyway?

How are the tools of today better than the tools of yesterday? It's not
llke you need a computer controlled drill. You can't go into many
stores and find good power tools, or even hand tools made in American
anymore. And I don't want to have to order stuff - with identity theft
I would rather go and pay cash for something thank risk my info going
out over the net.

I have a Sears Craftsman drill made in America over 25 years ago. I love
it and I work with it all the time. I paid a lot of money for it when I
bought it in college, and today's cheap drills cost the same but suck in
terms of quality. They feel cheap and they overheat, sound like the
motor is burning out, the blades and bits made overseas burn out or
break quicker than ones made years ago.

Today's wooden axe handles suck, today's picks bend if you strike them
the wrong way against the rocks you are trying to break, today's mason's
hoes break when you mix too stiff a batch of mortan, etc. Today's cheap
tools are not better than

Besides - I rather like buying something in person and making sure it
works before I take it home - whether with a car, a drill, a computer, etc.