Blind Pew,
Whilst you are essentially correct, you are at risk of being side-lined as an old-school pilot who refuses to see the advantages of modern technology....
To further enhance your argument: There are now automatic messages for pilots exceeding the narrowest of tolerances during hand flying, resulting in gentle phone calls from ops to the PF and/or the captain urging them at the very lest caution if not nudging them to use the automation rather than flying by hand. This clearly results in less hand flying than would otherwise be the case.
One could debate that automated flying is excellent "systems training" but should not count towards flying hours for more than say 10% of the time...
Perhaps some GA flight time (without AP) should be made mandatory, just a block of 2 hours per month of which one hour upper air work and one hour circuits would do the trick.
But life is not like that, unfortunately...
Companies (manufacturers as well as airlines) will always strive for more automation to "cut out the middle man" (less strikes or illness is less money lost) and to compensate for human deficiencies (fatigue, spacial disorientation etc).
Whilst I agree some crashes are the result of the automation, how do we decide the crashes which have been prevented by the same automation? Because that is the side the companies are on.