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Originally Posted by Peachie
This is an interesting subject for me. We are currently looking at engineered-wood flooring for our home at one of the local, (recommended here), flooring stores. After bringing several samples home, we were narrowing our choice on two maple samples from the same company that were comparable to the Mohawk domestic wood samples but priced $2. to $3. less per sq ft. I went online this evening to see if there was a picture of the flooring we were leaning toward installed in a room or someone's home. To my surprise, the cheaper sample flooring is made in China, a fact not disclosed on their website but by a floor installer. It's known China has created a false value for their currency to undercut the American dollar. If we place an order for Mohawk flooring we may not be creating a new job but it may be job security for a currently employed American. The online article indicated that initially the Chinese product couldn't compare to the American floor products. But several years later, they have copied the engineer-wood so well that it is difficult to tell the difference in American vs China engineered wood flooring product. So, do we lay out the couple of thousand extra dollars and save the jobs here now or pay it out later in taxes for "stimulus" projects to get American people back to work?
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That's an interesting situation. I don't know many people that are willing to pay thousands of dollars more for what is basically an equivalent product. Even if you decide to pay the extra money, most people wont, so those jobs will be lost eventually. I believe in a free market, but I am not smart enough to figure out how we can compete with 3rd world labor without losing our middle class. And, isn't that what management is doing when they move jobs out of the country? They are just using the free market to seek out the cheapest labor costs so they can increase their profits and increase their shareholders value. Unless we have people who are willing to work for $5 dollars a day in death traps like the one that just burned to the ground in Bangladesh, those jobs that can be done with cheap labor will never come back.