Quote Originally Posted by Z07
However, the person ultimately culpable for the decline in quality is the consumer.
Well said. After reading your original post, I was going to bring this up, but your retraction/explaination is well written. It's not the Chinese so much as it's our own desire to have many things, cheap (they do have standards, but those are set by the U.S. companies, and ultimately the consumers). As a small-time furniture maker, this is depressing to me. Nobody wants to pay for well-built things anymore. It's all poorly constructed Ikea crap that lasts five years (if even that long).