Knowledge is harmful.

Workers are to know only what they are told to know and not think terribly far beyond that.

Such behavior will be harshly punished.

... or so.

You see a lot of the older generation that were really good at what they did in manufacturing and other related jobs, looking for work in an environment that is no longer looking for their skill sets. Many of them are not far from just writing things off and retiring in a bit

NOW is the time to bring back manufacturing here to this country so that perhaps we can have some programs where we can leverage some of these people's knowledge to help provide knowledge transfers to a newer generation of manufacturing employees we can start building again, amongst other high tech jobs where similar knowledge has been lost and shipped overseas.

We really HAVE to say no to this TPP crap and start putting back in place tariffs, etc. so that companies who want to sell in this country have to start building stuff here too.

I think it would also help a lot of this older generation that isn't yet old enough to retire (or don't have enough money to with savings being destroyed) to get back on their feet again, and be a useful part of rebuilding our economy at the same time.

I had seen it coming back in the 80's within my profession/trade. It was being engineered so that the bulk of the work was being done by less skilled and interchangeable utility workers. Those of us who excelled were pushed into management or out the door.
Another aspect was the decoupling of design and engineering from production. The close working relationship between the two allowed one to learn from the other to provide a better end result. With the separation of the skills the effort became more adversarial than cooperative and killed the end results of our labor.
I'm an old fart who dropped out of the game in my 50's because I saw no reason to bloody myself in a game I got nothing from. I would eagerly offer my services to mentor anyone who had an interest and opportunity to provide a fulfilling career.
My years were fulfilling until they weren't

There's plenty of letters and numbers left after H1B.

that in fact governments and circumstance have to step in and prevent everyone from becoming turned into Caribbean-style slaves within and without the factory: it's the same logic of development, from Enclosure to Mao's Four Olds Campaign

como siempre, Honduras es el modelo
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/honduras-sold-libertarian-paradise-i-went-and-discovered-capitalist-nightmare
http://www.alternet.org/world/nightmare-libertarian-project-push-one-central-american-country-through-massive-privitization