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Comment by lightedman | Hacker News Reader

Because German engineering is world-renowned. This much has been known for a good long while. You can take a German bearing of 'low quality' vs. a Chinese bearing of 'high quality' and easily tell that the German bearing is far superior.

It only makes sense such engineering capability would result in a lot of manufacturing work in the middle-class range.

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And the reason that this is true is because Germany protect those jobs and values people that mastered their craft.

Which are the valued blue collar jobs in US - doctor, chef, programmer and lawyer. That's it.

> Which are the valued blue collar jobs in US - doctor, chef, programmer and lawyer.

None of those are blue collar job, and chef isn't particularly valued in the US.

The US only values lawyers.

Doctors, programmers, chefs are significantly imported from other countries... particularly India and China.

Over 50% of the doctors and specialists visited by myself and friends were Indians. Also, over 50% of the highly skilled software personnel and upper management I worked with were Indians.

* However, none of the lawyers were imported. The position coveted by the US is simply lawyer. A friend of mine had a father who was educated as a lawyer in the country he immigrated from and is one of the poorest person I know. Shame, had they been educated as a doctor or software engineer, then they and their adult-son would not have found poverty as quickly if at all.

On the other hand German cars have one of the worst reliability scores year after year.

Data from the UK seems to suggest it's not as clear as that. Depends on the make, even cats from the same group VAG vary heavily. Skoda and VW seem good and Audi poor.

http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/2015-uk-vehicle-depend...

In my circles in the USA, AUDI means "A Used Dodge Intrepid" so no wonder it's got a poor rap.

Huh? Citation needed.

"The myth suggests that these German brands produce unreliable vehicles, but actual long-term dependability results do not lie. Lately, German makes have been producing reliable vehicles, and the belief that they are unreliable should remain as nothing more than a myth."

http://www.jdpower.com/cars/articles/automotion-blog/5-car-q...

You can also get real high quality bearings made in China, but they will not be as cheap, and you will have to verify that you are getting what you asked for.

Therein lies another problem - verification. Quite often, the Chinese simply do not listen to what you tell them (or just can't understand it even when broken down into simple specifications. I've run into this with many Chinese LED manufacturers) and quite often you end up with a product you didn't ask for. I've never had that problem ordering anything from Germany.

Try Taiwan - especially for LEDs. It'll cost more but the QC is much better.

In the 10 years I've done LED lighting, Taiwan's LEDs may have better quality but the efficiency is horrid.

Can you? Where?

Until this year, China was unable to manufacture ballpoint pens.

"It was a years-long effort that cost millions of dollars and required the leadership of a state-run corporate colossus. It was front-page news, widely discussed on talk shows and celebrated on social media."

...

"China doesn't possess the advanced alloys and machines necessary to make a high-quality pen ball and socket."

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-16/china-s-l...

One thing that confuses me is how China doesn't possess the advanced alloys for ballpoint pen nibs? It's just an osmium alloy, not that difficult to do. They've got osmium out the yin-yang (no pun intended) and should have had alloys of that long, long ago.

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