economic question about a garden rake

[Mr_Yan]

This posed a minor problem for me. Usually I will opt to buy American made products when available without too much extra work.

Is it better to buy the Chinese built rake from the small hardware store your neighbor owns or buy the American made rake from a big box store owned several states away with no ties to the local community?

The Chinese rake is $9.99 with hardwood handle
The American rake is $12.99 with fiberglass handle


I bought the Chinese rake - three reasons (1) the hardware store is on my drive home from work, (2) I know the owners and go to church with them, (3) I prefer hardwood handles on my tools.

 

[ErnieCopp]

I do not believe in Protectionism, so i think it is fine to buy the one that suits you best. But the saddest part to me is that neither price has much, if anything, to do with the cost of it. Almost everything we buy is priced according to what the market will bear, and not what it cost the store to buy it. They call that Market Based Pricing, and has changed during the last fifty years from the Cost Based Pricing, that we used to have. The worst result of that is we, as consumers, can no longer use the price to determine the relative quality of two similar items.

But you can make that rake much better for gardening if you clamp a piece of 1" X 1" wood, about 2 feet long, to the back of it. Then when you flip it over to smooth the ground, it will do that much faster and easier. And if you ever need to take it off, it is easy to do.

Ernie