made in china

[TommyTooter]

when my brother asked me what i wanted for my birthday, i thought a nice chef knife would be good. we're not exactly rich either, so i was very surprised to see that it was a henkel, one of the top brands and i thought, very expensive.

then i discovered that it had been made in china and not germany. oh, it is clearly a better knife than the one from dollar general, but chinese metallurgy cannot compare to the germans, especially on a blade.

i make jewelry and deal in all sorts of used metal and stone things to fill up my tables at shows. there was a contractor cherry-picking my tools for the good brand names and i noticed that he was leaving the craftsman tools behind.

he said he stopped buying them when they started making them in china. when i pointed out they still had the lifetime guarantee he said that it wasn't worth the cost of a workman's comp claim when the tool broke in one of his employee's faces.

there is a definite low quality workmanship coming out of the prison factories. their idea of quality control is clearly less stringent than in the west. i was dealing gemstone carvings done by guild workers and those, set against the work of prisoners, was frightening in the contrast in the expressions on the animal's faces.

this could go on and on and quite possibly will. the woes of the consumer of chinese products are endless. here is an eyeopener about chinese products being used by a public utility.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_-deXSecJM

 

[BornReady]

I guess you get what you pay for.

 

[TommyTooter]

that's very true.

people need to pay much closer attention to where products are made. there are clear differences in the quality and durability of goods made in the US and europe as opposed to asia, africa and south america.

also, people should make sure that the imported products they do buy from third world countries, were not manufactured by children or prisoners and the laborers are treated fairly and the factories and mines are safe. this is a big problem with apparel, minerals and gemstones. i advocate a boycott of gemstones and finished jewelry made in thailand because of child labor.

this year, apple computer has had a very bad public affairs problem with a chinese plant with bad conditions and a series of worker suicides.

 

[Minor Axis]

Every major corporation that can, will send every manufacturing job out of the country, so you unemployed former factory worker/consumer can have a little less expensive item, and they can be rolling in dough. Sounds equitable to me. :smiley24: