OK - I’ll throw out the flip-side to the popular sentiment;
‘Why Chinese goods cost less’ is only a part of the byproduct of this mentality ‘that the finer things don’t matter’.
I like to remind my kids that I didn’t wear seat-belts in the backseat of cars, baby cribs didn’t have mandated slat spacing, no one wore helmets when we rode our bikes. Go back another generation further and no one cared about smoking, no one cared about alcohol (watch a few episodes of MadMen), no one cared about sugar intake and carbs and blood pressure…and for the most part, we were a more productive society during those generations…maybe because we craved more, we knew less & we had less.
My Dad sent me that video a month or so ago with the message, “Gage [my son] would LOVE this.” He’s right, my son would jump on that thing and go at it. And within reason, I let my kids try things at which my wife cringes, but I see the value in them knowing how to fix a car, build something, make something…and for them to know how much it hurts when you’re careless and get hurt (again, within reason). That kid (and another dozen like him) has learned a trade - that’s valuable. We might cringe as we think of protecting him like we’d protect our kids, but when you’re part of a family living in a single room on the 4th floor of a concrete ‘worker’ building on a backstreet in Souzhou and there aren’t regulations about you needing to go to school (because of who your family is) and a guy offers you $1 and a chance at operating a monstrous ‘transformer’ robot with a bucket, why not?! I bet his Dad is an operator and taught him the basics - and watch how refined he is at operating that thing - we’re not watching his second go at it, we’re watching something along the lines if his second YEAR at it.
China has its drawbacks (pollution, worker rights, lack of political transparency) but their willingness to get the job done and not complain about doing it is why they continue to kick our butts in the realm of ‘stuff’ - and all the while we complain and still buy the stuff anyway. That kid will probably excavate for the foundation of a plant where workers with his mentality will mold, stitch, assemble and package something you and I will buy - providing the owner with the funds to keep making more and building more plants, which will require a quick shout out to that kid to jump back on that excavator.