You add: Definitely a dearth of jobs rather than skills.
A dearth of jobs because environmental, health, and labor regulations make outlaws of Americans who try go provide "subsistance, habitation, clothing, and defense."
Few are fully aware -- yet -- of how profoundly the environmentalist agenda is in the process of shackling Americans from engaging in FOOD PRODUCTION, the most basic of human rights and needs. Farming and fishing (not to mention textile production for clothing) are becoming virtually illegal due to onerous regulation. Not long ago, all you needed to make a living as a fisherman was a boat, some knowledge, and some self-discipline. It was your GOD GIVEN RIGHT to fish if you wanted to, or to grow food and sell it if you wanted to, or to invent and manufacture a widget convenience that can make people's lives easier.
The only reason -- the ONLY reason -- there is such a huge market for cheap Chinese goods, is because mostly unelected bureaucrats in government PROHBIBIT Americans from manufacturing them here. The only reason energy is so expensive, and the only reason food prices may soon follow, is because government PROHBITS amd makes outlaws of Americans who should be producing the food and energy here.
And creating the JOBS here. Where skills are rewarded.
Thanks; excellent elaboration on the point I was making.
Hamilton’s point in that paragraph I quoted had to do with the vulnerability and dependence of the then-nascent USA upon other nations for such things. Not a call for autarky, but for independence in those things.