I think one of the fundamental flaws with American companies is that someone with "the right skills" means the person is a shoe-in at the time of hire. They are

I think one of the fundamental flaws with American companies is that someone with "the right skills" means the person is a shoe-in at the time of hire. They are expected the walk onto the job with all the training, know-how, experience etc that the company needs at that very minute. That's not an American problem. It is a global problem. 100 years ago you got job training. Then you had to pay colleges the privilege filtering you or your colleagues out for the companies. Nowadays even that is not enough, and businesses are demanding 2-3 internships because people are desperate enough to push all the costs of job training onto themselves. It is a welcome change for many businesses, but the result is that too many people choose a field by accident. Then they have effectively wasted X years and X dollars. As a business, you don't foot the bill of training a potentially bad worker/student, but the entire society loses total productivity.