[expat_panama]

Many of our great grandparents were farmers who lamented the fact that the young left the farm and got factory jobs in the city.  These days there're a lot of old retired factory workers whining that young people have decided to leave the family factory tradition for better jobs in the services.

Either people are free to choose where they work or they are slaves.   Having the government force people back into factories either by taxes or by law is both wasteful and wrong.   We need fewer laws and taxes not more, and we need more freedom not less.

[Smokin' Joe]

I'm not arguing for the government forcing people back into factories. This isn't China. Which is why their stuff is so cheap, among other reasons.

I do rue, however the loss of capability of the average American who used to posess a wide variety of mechanical skills, who knew how to change spark plugs, lube a chassis, drive a nail, and had a host of basic skills to draw on.

Those same farm skills were good prep for just about any trade--still are.

I do see that slipping away. Life isn't a video game, computers are great tools, but they will not take the treatment that the tools needed to build shelter for them will. And computer skills will not build that shelter either, at least not yet.

When we lose the ability to pass on basic mechanical skills, we are doomed to the dustbin of history.

It is nice to design technology, but the nation that builds it owns it, and we are building less. Don't confuse what we charge for what we build for what we build, either, which is what the article did.