<story><title>Germany&apos;s days as an industrial superpower are coming to an end</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-10/why-germany-s-days-as-an-industrial-superpower-are-coming-to-an-end</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jackcosgrove</author><text>Germany&amp;#x27;s strategy has been to offer higher quality products at a huge markup. Just using the auto industry as an example, in the past twenty years the difference in quality between a mass market vehicle and a luxury vehicle has compressed. Competing on quality seems to be getting harder.&lt;p&gt;The Anglophone economies, whose shift to services away from manufacturing has been ballyhooed and decried in many quarters, embraced competing on novelty. By being the first mover in many industries.&lt;p&gt;The Anglophone strategy led to greater internal inequality but seems to be better from an aggregate standpoint. I&amp;#x27;d like to see Germany&amp;#x27;s manufacturing strategy work since it preserves mid-skill jobs, but this is casting doubt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JKCalhoun</author><text>I agree that we need to keep what you call here mid-skill jobs.&lt;p&gt;Too often I see people say to the disappearance of manual labor jobs: good, retrain people to use computers. I have slowly come to the belief that there are some people for whom working with their hands is the only kind of sane work they can do.&lt;p&gt;You can call them blue-collar, or working class (these are the people incidentally that raised me, the people in my neighborhood growing up).&lt;p&gt;Why would anyone not want to work in a clean office with only a compiler as your boss and a big paycheck waiting for you every two weeks? When I was younger I assumed that anyone not in the tech field were people not smart enough to pass Algebra in high school. It had not occurred to me then that it might go beyond aptitude and instead be due to something more fundamental about a person&amp;#x27;s nature or character.&lt;p&gt;I know I&amp;#x27;m getting hand-wavy with &lt;i&gt;nature&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;character&lt;/i&gt; but I&amp;#x27;m not sure what other words to use. I came to believe that though many people who are like me find some satisfaction from having solved a difficult problem, or having created a functional framework that can now do work to solve problems there are many others where satisfaction primarily comes from having changed something with their hands.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know if all of that makes sense or resonates with anyone. I&amp;#x27;ll add this though, the older I get, the more I recognize even in myself the satisfaction that comes from doing something physical (even mowing the lawn as an example). I seem to take some pleasure from taking something unordered or in a raw state, and ending up with a thing in an ordered or &amp;quot;finished&amp;quot; state. It&amp;#x27;s no doubt why I have pursued woodworking as a hobby, print making, creating PCBs. (And that fresh mown lawn looks so much nicer than the ragged lawn that was there before.)&lt;p&gt;In any event, following that line of reasoning has made me realize we should keep a large number of manufacturing, construction, repair and other manual labor jobs so that we can serve the whole of society. Just expecting everyone to learn to code is misguided and will fail so many people.&lt;p&gt;It is sad to me that Germany appears to have tried this model, tried to keep manufacturing in their country, and yet it is purportedly failing. I&amp;#x27;m not too optimistic about our future when we apparently measure progress by &amp;quot;cost of living standards&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Germany&apos;s days as an industrial superpower are coming to an end</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-10/why-germany-s-days-as-an-industrial-superpower-are-coming-to-an-end</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jackcosgrove</author><text>Germany&amp;#x27;s strategy has been to offer higher quality products at a huge markup. Just using the auto industry as an example, in the past twenty years the difference in quality between a mass market vehicle and a luxury vehicle has compressed. Competing on quality seems to be getting harder.&lt;p&gt;The Anglophone economies, whose shift to services away from manufacturing has been ballyhooed and decried in many quarters, embraced competing on novelty. By being the first mover in many industries.&lt;p&gt;The Anglophone strategy led to greater internal inequality but seems to be better from an aggregate standpoint. I&amp;#x27;d like to see Germany&amp;#x27;s manufacturing strategy work since it preserves mid-skill jobs, but this is casting doubt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jijijijij</author><text>Disclaimer: I don&amp;#x27;t know shit, about anything.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The Anglophone strategy led to greater internal inequality but seems to be better from an aggregate standpoint.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s see. I feel like whatever is brewing economically and socially may hurt the &amp;quot;service industry backed societies&amp;quot; harder, when the time has come.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Germany still has an enviable roster of small, agile manufacturers, and the Bundesbank and others reject the notion that full-blown deindustrialization is anywhere close.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not all cars. It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; of things you haven&amp;#x27;t heard about, because they are highly specialized, niche industrial parts. I think, the German economy rests on the shoulders of &lt;i&gt;Maschinenbau&lt;/i&gt; and, presumably, there is a whole lot less naked growth enabled &amp;quot;bullshit&amp;quot; products in that space.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t lie, don&amp;#x27;t you &lt;i&gt;feel&lt;/i&gt; something is freaky with the economy? I don&amp;#x27;t just mean numbers and stock value... something more fundamental. Don&amp;#x27;t you feel overwhelmed by commerce, at times? Like, there is &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; of non-products produced. Almost violently pushed onto people, &lt;i&gt;sickening&lt;/i&gt; amounts of &amp;quot;stuff&amp;quot; saturating all channels. How many mouths does marketing feed? There is so, so much marketing. Can this really be sustainable???&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know. I feel something is getting &lt;i&gt;horribly&lt;/i&gt;  out of balance and the service industry is a symptom. Rabid inequality is a symptom. Like core rot, it looks fine, until a little gust lays the tree onto your house.</text></comment>