The “snowball fallacy” is a fallacy because there is no reason California s can’t swing the regulatory pendulum back the other direction if there is too much economy / freedom impacted.
We are never going to catch up.
IMO this is all cyclical.
* This is metaphorical. Obviously there were also textbooks and research papers and technical manuals and everything else. The point is much of it came from abroad and they learned it all to the point that they're the experts today.
3 to 4 decades ago anything from China was poor quality and US manufacturing was tight tolerance.
When we outsourced, we did the training to get them where they are today and stopped investing in our skills at home.
There are still skilled people here who can train and the knowledge is not some sort of eldritch incantation.
The main issues with learning is lack of jobs and lack of opportunity to apply skills if you have them.
> There are still skilled people here who can train
If you don't acknowledge you're losing the race, you will never catch up.