Mad respect, man. Thx for filling in the blanks. Your family is a testament to the living history that has fallen by the wayside. Many blessings on you & yours.

The "savagely competitive environment" of your own field, industrial sales, makes me believe you have witnessed the zero-sum wiliness of our species Up Close & Personal

U.S. leadership, so-called, has an illiterate r'ship to manufacturing. The thought is that throwing billions of dollars @ the problem [to construct factories] will fill the human ingenuity gap.

It's not about building; it's about people. The operational & strategic chops aren't there. That tool kit no longer exists in the U.S. There's no ethic for this. Building a new plant can't backfill the gap in human ingenuity.

Randi Weingarten, the prez of the American Federation of Teachers, insists that "over the course of time high schools and community colleges will be able to train nearly all of our new technical staff that's going to be needed as part of chip manufacturing in the U.S."

Celeste Drake, a White House labor advisor for Joe's admin, said, "Part of what we're doing is investing in training so that we have skilled tradespeople." She suggested that employers should increase wages in order to attract the workforce they want.

But when Celeste & Randi relay their ideas about labor & the trades, I sense a little Hamburger Helper around the edges. These *experts* don't comprehend the knowledge base the U.S. lost when it lost manufacturing & industry. They fail to recognize the singular importance of that knowledge base. It's like they want to pretend that it doesn't need to exist, therefore it never existed.