"You're acting like $100 is like a month's rent or a car payment. What does
$100 get you these days? "

Some people are tired of our landfills geting stuffed with cheap imported junk that cannot be repaired, and then we will eventually have to deal with the environmental aspects of it. Some are actually tired of sending money overseas. I know I am, and have stopped. In fact I buy almost nothing new. Food of course.

People need those 4K TVs and new cars, I couldn't even drive a new car. I get in a car I expect to see PRNDSL or 1-3|2-4 or whatever, I want the lights to come on immediately when I open a door and to go off immediately when I close it. I will lock and unlock my own doors thank you.

I also don't need their suposed 500 watts surround system that is more like half that, if that much, and has one subwoofer and a bunch of balsa wood speakers.

There is a small but growing contingent of the population who are simply sick of the rat race to get the biggest TV and the new car with variable valve timing and direct cylinder injection. I don't need a 4K TV because my eyes don't see that good, on a PC I'll put a 19 inch monitor on 800 X 600.

Y'all yuppie type go ahead and make the Chinese richer. It is really helping them, all fifty of them. The rest have about gotten to the point where they can afford a few things but you are helping their government mainly, and we really aren't all that sure about them.

We NEED to learn to fix **** again. We NEED to learn to build **** again. Tis Trump gratness is a bunch of **** because he never worked a day in his life. I like the idea behind it but he is not the best choicee to try to implement it. The one thing though is that we cannot keep on importng all this ****.

If you got that school taughten disease you migth retort with all our exports, and for example food, we export more. By tonnage. Not dollar value. We export wheat, try living on wheat. And now finally we had some months of being a net exporter of oil, but realize that alot of the refining is done overseas. Even if Keynes was right aout his ****ed up model of an economy, no country, no matter what, can continue to consume more than it prodices forever. Countries pointed to by socialists and wannabes like Norway for example, have natural resources that are shared with the People. It reduces their tax burden for their social programs. In one country, I forgot which, they generate so much electricity that you do not get a bill from the elctric company every month, you get a check. In the US they would never share like that. Looks like about twenty people get that money.

Even a toaster. I remember about VCRs having to tell people "This is not a toaster". Well now they are as disposable. But are they ? Are they really ? Can we just throw them in a dumpster and forget about them and all the tapes made on our camcorders from the 1980s n **** ?

i take the view that repairers are in a war with manufacturers. When I was hot and heavy as a pro I didn't want to give much help except to people who seemed like pros because that was our living. But now I am more willing.

I just say to these people to learn respect for electricity. When in doubt keep one hand away, in your pocket in fact. When you have something powered by a wallwart you are a bit less unsafe, though a good screwup could still cause a fire. You are just a bit less likely to get a shock due to a ground fault. There are plenty of other ways to die. Like a microwave oven, you don't need a ground fault at all to die off of one of those. In fact most hobbyists should stay our of them.

But they won't. They didn't before and they won't in the future. And some of them are like "Hold my beer". I don't like to see good people die, and they probably were good because they were trying to do something useful, but some are going to get zapped. It is like the gun issue, some will die, too bad.

But, still the price of a unit or replacement is of issue when you are a pro. My time was billed at about a hundred bucks an hour. At that rate of course the replacement cost is important. But then every once in a while you'll get someone who really likes their TV. And VCRs too, ?I have had people say "I don't care I could buy a new one for that, I finally figured out how to program this MF ! FIX IT". And don't even get me started on old stereo equipment.

Another thing with me was 30 year old cars. I owuld fix them literally until they fell apart. I am from a car family, and I never wanted a new car. I won't just buy it because that is what is for sale.

A hundred dollars ? If I had the work I could have made a hundred dollars in the time it took to type this.