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It is obviously not an easy thing to make a career change. Specially if you are asking people to go from factory workers to say, software developers (a career t

It is obviously not an easy thing to make a career change. Specially if you are asking people to go from factory workers to say, software developers (a career that requires years of formal or informal training). However, here you are not asking for that. You are asking them to go from coal miners to solar panel installation technicians. Not trivial, but doable. Of course, it would be easier to do it their state or country provided retraining programs and good unemployment benefits. You know, societal support for a societal shift, as opposed to 'mumble mumble bootstraps'. But the change itself is possible, desirable, and does not require the retraining equivalent of a full college education. I can't find it now, but there was a recent article about how, on the short term at least, a move to renewable energy will likely create more jobs than it eliminates.

pm24601 10y ago
Really? Lets see coal mining - heavy equipment operators. Driving trucks, excavators, coal train loading, locomotive engineers.... to .... electrical engine maintenance and solar panel construction. It may be just me, but I am missing the vast overlap of similar skill sets between the two industries.
- lazaroclapp 10y ago
  Are you saying this is not doable in the context of a formal retraining program? What you describe is similar to the transition between being in construction to being an electrician, a transition which I know a lot of working class people have done. I particularly once knew a man who had been, professionally: a construction worker, a truck driver, a security guard, a plumber, an electrician, a factory worker, a caretaker for the elderly and a private corporate driver. Yes, it is harder than going from C# enterprise developer to JS front end developer. It is more on the scale of going from electrical engineering into software. But it is viable. "Just learn to code", for example, isn't. We should be, as a society, providing lots of help for people to accomplish similar transitions, rather than saying "oh, sucks to be you, anyone without masters level education is useless to our modern economy" or "oh well, we will prop your failing industry, even though it is killing us all, because otherwise you won't ever be able to get a job". There are blue collar jobs that will be around for a decade or two at least. Also, I am in favor of safety nets and UBI and free college education, but that doesn't preclude offering people structured paths back into useful work they can realistically take.
  - pm24601 10y ago
    > Are you saying this is not doable in the context of a formal retraining program? No, I am not.

pm24601 10y ago

Really? Lets see coal mining - heavy equipment operators. Driving trucks, excavators, coal train loading, locomotive engineers.... to .... electrical engine maintenance and solar panel construction. It may be just me, but I am missing the vast overlap of similar skill sets between the two industries.

lazaroclapp 10y ago
Are you saying this is not doable in the context of a formal retraining program? What you describe is similar to the transition between being in construction to being an electrician, a transition which I know a lot of working class people have done. I particularly once knew a man who had been, professionally: a construction worker, a truck driver, a security guard, a plumber, an electrician, a factory worker, a caretaker for the elderly and a private corporate driver. Yes, it is harder than going from C# enterprise developer to JS front end developer. It is more on the scale of going from electrical engineering into software. But it is viable. "Just learn to code", for example, isn't. We should be, as a society, providing lots of help for people to accomplish similar transitions, rather than saying "oh, sucks to be you, anyone without masters level education is useless to our modern economy" or "oh well, we will prop your failing industry, even though it is killing us all, because otherwise you won't ever be able to get a job". There are blue collar jobs that will be around for a decade or two at least. Also, I am in favor of safety nets and UBI and free college education, but that doesn't preclude offering people structured paths back into useful work they can realistically take.
- pm24601 10y ago
  > Are you saying this is not doable in the context of a formal retraining program? No, I am not.