Are Americans losing valuable skills?

I remember growing up and watching my father and my friend's fathers work on cars, televisions, appliances etc. Nowadays as I drive through my neighborhood I see nobody working on their cars. While talking with co-workers I am always hearing tales of this repairman/tradesman doing this or that. While digging up my sprinkler distribution box a couple weeks ago I noticed other folks in the neighborhood were doing sprinkler maintenance also, only they had landscape companies doing it.

Have Americans as a society lost the skills to help themselves or have we become too complacent/lazy/rich to bother with what many would consider menial labor?

via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/1y04ac0