I was a car mechanic for a while. One of the hard things about some of the trades is that you must own your own tools. So when your at a auto repair place (whet

I was a car mechanic for a while. One of the hard things about some of the trades is that you must own your own tools. So when your at a auto repair place (whether that's a car dealership or an independent repair shop) is that the tool box and everything in it belongs to that mechanic/technician. When you quit the business (almost always due to injury), you sell your tools. It is my understanding that machinists have a similar economic system. Selling your tools means retiring from the industry. I remember some complaints by the Wall Street Journal (back in the 90s) where they were lamenting the shortage of "swiss style machinists" - who make tiny, precise things, and your entire day's production could fit inside an expresso cup. Upon further investigation, that type of machinist had a 10 year long apprenticeship. Only European countries subsidized such apprenticeship programs as no American company could afford to hire workers who needed 10 years of on-the-job-training before they could be productive. They had mentioned that almost every American "swiss style machinist" got laid off when the Cold War ended and every one sold off their tools to make ends meet. As a country, we go through these silly boom/bust fads. The slavish devotion to cost-cutting has damaged our country's ability to survive change.