I think it's more accurate to say it's labour unions telling her this is a major talking point for this campaign. A further rise in workers willing to take personal responsibility for delivering value to customers for money will further weaken unions. Many workers reject having another layer of politicians acting as their "representatives" in negotiating with their employers or corporate customers (W-2 or 1099). I'm quite capable of selling my human capital without another apparatchik parasite taking their cut, TYVM. Of course... for those of us that take responsibility for producing value and earning good salaries for doing so we face the joy of being hated as the 1%...

There may thus have been a pressure to select for children who were good at imitation when the immediate reward was simply the completion of the task and not the reward that comes from later using the tool.

This is an interesting idea, but the problem to me is that someone had to have invented the spear. Someone had to have thought through that that day, when his belly was full and there was still leftover whooly mammoth, would be a good day to make more spears for next time. That isn't an imitating tool-user, that's a reasoning, goal-oriented tool-maker. Supposedly a child grows up and stops imitating and starts planning ahead, but even that's not so common anymore.

How much trouble do most teenagers get into based solely on imitating each other or imitating bad role models? Just because it becomes apparent why so many children are imitators (and sadly STAY imitators) doesn't mean we should celebrate it like Zimmer did. I think he's rationalizing that his kid wasn't the very rare young child that saw past the imitation and showed real genius.

This article convinced me to try even harder to make sure my kids do NOT imitate me knee-jerk. Obviously that will take time, and 3-4 year olds will develop at their own speed, but I still want them to be tool-makers, not tool-users eventually. I'm not going to tell my kid she's special for being an imitator like Zimmer plans to.