I agree there is a contradiction. In light of your comment, it seems Germany may have created an industrial training/apprenticeship bubble, feeding temporary artificial feedback for a long-term benefit for working population skillsets. But how can the US just transplant the skeleton of the training program, when they suffer negative feedback, with dropping enrollments in vocational programs? There is no apparent solution for the manufacturing decline, hence the grimacing suits at the end. The funding will never come, not from revenues.

The author acknowledges the dilemma that to maintain competitiveness, the US will have to do something substantive. To match the Germans in skill set infrastructure, the education system will have to reform to look more German, in a way. Exactly how seems unclear.