Trade schools... another reason Germany produces good stuff. Trade schools that produce craftsmen with an engineer’s eye to detail and who can look for and find problems before they become failures.
We, on the other hand, have a bunch of mostly self trained wrench slingers lacking in technical training and filled with a bunch of self-taught half truths.
For example, find me one hydraulic technician that actually knows the principles of operation of a hydrostatic transmission and can trouble shoot and repair one. Good luck in finding anyone who can do more than hunt, peck and replace parts in a random effort.
Texas State Technical Institute in Waco is a collection of ramshackle shacks on a former air base. It does not instill the image of being a paragon of industrial leadership or technical prowess. On the contrary. We should and must do better or we will continue our spiral downward... we may anyway.
I think the reason for that, is because our society has decided that everybody ought to go to college, as opposed to encouraging people to learn a trade. We're a "service economy" now .... who would want to learn a dirty old trade?
That sort of thinking is a luxury -- it sprouted up at the peak of American power and wealth, and the idea has increasingly taken hold as our manufacturing base has diminished.
Short of a crash -- which I think is coming -- I don't think there's any way we'll return to a cultural mindset that actually values tradecraft.