I’ll never understand the point about the “competitiveness of US workers.” When I think of US workers, they are people working in Wal-Mart, or McDonalds or on an assembly line. They can be taught basic functions - they don’t need a college education.
Who are these people competing with? Is there a “worker Olympics” somewhere.
The word “competitiveness” is being used as something like a thought-terminating cliche. It’s meant to end argument without actually presenting any critical thought.
As for US workers, they’re more than just the ones you mentioned. However, they all share the same issue.
If I remember correctly, the whole “competitiveness” scare goes back to the 1980s when the Japanese supposedly started outstripping the U.S. in science, engineering, and mathematics. Ever since then it has been a boogieman issue used for increasingly heavy-handed federal involvement in local schools to try and churn out genius automatons, to the detriment of everything else.