Although everyone does benefit from lower-priced goods and services, people also care greatly about the chance to be productively employed and the quality of their work. Declining employment opportunities feel real and immediate; the rise in real incomes brought by lower prices does not.

Globalization has redefined the competition for employment and incomes in the United States. Tradeoffs will have to be made between the two.

The prices are lower than in many parts of the state, even though the incomes are fairly average.

The lower cost of Chinese goods means we can spend more on other goods and services.

It gives them more leverage. If your cost of goods is lower, you have more leverage to negotiate prices that might be able to beat out competing technologies.

One way to measure the size of a company, industry, or economy is to determine its output. But a better way is to determine its added value - namely, the difference between the value of its outputs, that is, the goods and services it produces, and the costs of its inputs, such as the raw materials and energy it consumes.