wrote in message
You would end up with fewer, but much higher quality
tools. And you might learn to use those fewer tools more. Which is
more productive: four $2500 tools that work, or twenty $500 tools
that don't work?

I have a range of tools. And for the most part the higher priced,
quality tools work well and I am happy to use them. The lower priced,
imported from SE Asia tools don't work as well and I am always
thinking about replacing them. Maybe if the cheap imported tools did
not exist, I would be saved from myself.


Hard to say. Your example of four $2500 versus twenty $500 is a bit extreme
perhaps, and somewhere in between lies the truth. If all the tools were the
same quality and adjusted price as in the good old days, I wonder how many
of us could not afford to be in this hobby at all. I started out with a
cheap benchtop saw, later upgraded to a Delta contractor saw If I had to
start off with a $2500 saw from the start, there would never have been a
start.
--
Ed
http://pages.cthome.net/edhome/