We’ve absolutely screwed ourselves when it comes to engineering.
The suits running businesses have gleefully offshored engineering jobs. I suspect there was some small measure of payback in those decisions. You know, teach those smart engineering guys who’s boss. Pay them back for all the mocking of business majors. So, engineering jobs were offshored if it saved $1.37 a year.
The long term effect is that people bright enough to be engineers avoided engineering in college because they want to be employed when they graduate.
Well, yeah -- the payback comes from a focus on "looking out for the share-holders." Lower costs and all that, and thus (supposedly) higher stock prices.
Their payback is in the form of higher bonuses and stock options.
There seems to be no room in such decisions for the longer-term considerations, such as what happens when the domestic manufacturing base goes away; and the "service economy" business model runs afoul of the fact that the hard capital needed to run it has moved overseas.
This is the sort of stuff Lenin was talking about when he said that capitalists would sell him the rope he used to hang them.