4. Make Big Tech Pay for 1,000 Trade Schools, with Rep. Jake Auchincloss

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Every shop owner I know is fighting the same war: where do the next machinists come from, and who is going to pay to train them? On this one I sat down with my own congressman, Jake Auchincloss, who came down to the shop with a plan that actually puts money behind the problem.

Why not make big tech build a thousand trade schools across the country, surge one-on-one tutoring to every K-12 student, and make the social media corporations foot the bill? It is bold, it is specific, and it is the freshest idea on workforce I have heard in a long time.

Jake does not pull punches, and neither do I. He calls the social media platforms what he thinks they are: not content companies, but pharmaceutical companies selling dopamine to kids whose brains cannot fight back. Digital fentanyl. We get into how they lobby Congress, the three lines they run every time, and why he thinks the states, not Washington, are going to be the ones to tax their ad revenue and put it back into education.

But this is a shop floor show, so we did not stay in policy land. I told him the truth about what training really costs, the 300 percent you eat on a new hire, the forty grand it takes to fix a spindle after a crash, and why the small shops doing two to fifteen million in revenue are the ones who need to be protected and paid to bring young people in. We argued lottery versus merit for getting kids into trade schools, why we are failing young men, and why the best machinists in their sixties and seventies should be treated like the celebrities they are.

Then we went wide. The new space race and what it is doing to aerospace demand. Drones, defense, and why we should be learning from Ukraine. The K-shaped economy. Tariffs that Jake never even got to vote on. Local banks as the backbone of small manufacturing. Energy costs and the case for nuclear. And a real conversation about AI, where I make the case that it grows shops instead of gutting them, the same way Industry 4.0 did.

This is a long one because it earned it. Two builders, one machinist and one congressman, trying to figure out how we actually fix the workforce instead of just complaining about it. Pour a coffee and dig in.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (1:00) Rep. Jake Auchincloss: 1,000 trade schools, K-12 tutoring, paid for by social media corporations
• (2:01) Why the 2020 school closures were a catastrophe kids haven’t recovered from
• (3:07) Taxing the attention-frackers, and the three pillars of a real trade school
• (5:05) Jamie’s shop-floor truth: training costs, crashes, paying machinists, protecting small shops
• (9:23) The problem with trade schools (and what we think you should do to to fix it)
• (13:37) How we fail young men, and why purpose, teams, and rules matter
• (15:52) Why social media companies are dopamine dealers—not content platforms
• (17:36) The temperance argument, and how Big Tech lobbies Congress to dodge it
• (19:12) Why we created Hire MFG Leaders (and why you should use it)
• (19:40) Where the bill lands: why the states will lead with ad-revenue levies
• (21:12) Accreditation red tape, and the free Titans of CNC curriculum
• (23:16) A small-group training model, and why a case of parts beats a credential
• (26:17) The manufacturing Renaissance: aerospace, space, defense, and drones
• (30:04) The K-shaped economy and why certs like AS9100 draw the line
• (31:15) Precision tiers: how medical work compares to aerospace
• (32:27) Massachusetts’ edge in high-mix precision (and the grant red tape that holds it back)
• (36:04) How ProShop ERP can help your shop achieve on-time delivery
• (37:38) Which trade-school model works, plus discipline and keeping a job
• (40:54) How to help more shops start and why tax credits miss the unprofitable
• (42:54) Shoutout: Local banks are the backbone of small manufacturing
• (45:02) Locally priced and globally sold: the squeeze on American shops
• (46:00) Energy costs, solar rules, and the case for building nuclear
• (48:24) Why you should register for the IMTS Job Shops Workshop
• (49:18) Tariffs: no vote, all uncertainty, and the run-on-gas effect
• (51:47) Tariff outputs or subsidize inputs? The post-war order and how China cheated
• (54:40) AI in Congress and why it disrupts and creates jobs like Industry 4.0
• (58:02) WarpCore, edge agents, and growing a shop 5x instead of cutting it 80%
• (1:02:22) Why ingenuity is the wall AI keeps hitting, from CAD/CAM to AI poetry
• (1:03:57) Why this goes the way of the internet (and staying optimistic with guardrails)

Resources Mentioned

• Hire MFG Leaders
• ProShop ERP
• IMTS Job Shops Workshop
• Titans of CNC Academy
• Marzilli Machine
• WarpCore AI

Connect with Jake Auchincloss

• Jake Auchincloss (U.S. House website)
• Rep. Jake Auchincloss on Facebook