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There are only 50k coal miners in the USA. I'm not at all against generous job retraining programs, but why does the rest of the country/world need to be held o

There are only 50k coal miners in the USA. I'm not at all against generous job retraining programs, but why does the rest of the country/world need to be held off any progress on this issue for the sake of a relatively small group? There are individual companies that have more employees. After 9/11 the airline industry lost something like 40,000 jobs. We didn't resurrect the WPA then. What makes coal special?

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
The airline industry is scattered all over the country. If you lose your airline job in, say, Chicago, there are a lot of other jobs in Chicago. But coal is the backbone of a big chunk of Appalachia. If you lose your coal job in Welch, West Virginia, there's nothing else. And if there are a few other jobs, the number of laid-off coal-related people absolutely swamps the openings.
- empath75 8y ago
  So move people away, bulldoze the towns and let it return to nature.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- jbattle 8y ago
  Honestly, I'd love if our society chose to be more generous and invest in retraining workers across the board. But if someone loses their job in Welch, West Virginia, and there's nothing else ... they might need to move. How is it different from steel jobs drying up in Gary IN? Or automobile jobs in Detroit? Or fishing jobs in Maine? Or tobacco jobs in ... wherever tobacco was grown
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ethbro 8y ago
    > tobacco The Carolinas and Virginia, I think. And you're right, it's not that different. The only thing I'd say is that I believe steel jobs were a bit slower of a transition. I believe most of the slide took place in the 60s - 80s as lower cost Japanese steel took off? Tobacco is also somewhat replaceable. If you were planting it, you can plant other things. So the glide path is a bit easier.
    - philipkglass 8y ago
      Most of the lost coal mining jobs were also lost in decades past: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES1021210001 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES1021210001 Set the "from" date back to 1985 (earliest year available in this UI). There were 170,500 American coal mining jobs in January 1985. When Obama entered office in January 2009, there were 86,400.
      - ethbro 8y ago
        Point. So I guess the jobs left are the last of the industry. The irony is that production of coal seems to have increased (see top graph; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_St... ) since 1970. Goes to show the power of political narrative vs a reality of automation. But I suppose even for the companies it's a lot easier to blame Washington than tell people you bought a $250,000 machine to replace them.
        AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        > The irony is that production of coal seems to have increased I think that's the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. But that's all strip mining with giant machines. It's more capital and fewer workers. > But I suppose even for the companies it's a lot easier to blame Washington than tell people you bought a $250,000 machine to replace them. It's more like: somebody else bought a $250,000 machine to replace them five states away.
subway 8y ago
I think a big part of it is that airline industry is typically co-located in cities with large numbers of other jobs, allowing a region to soak up the loss a little more easily. In coal dependent regions, the mining jobs create downstream jobs in transportation and general support of mining towns. This means when a mine shuts down, along with it go other local jobs, from gas station attendants to truck drivers and freight train conductors.
- bradknowles 8y ago
  There's already a major shortage of truck drivers in this country. Maybe not where the mines are, but elsewhere. But if they're truck drivers, then they should be able to drive trucks elsewhere, for other industries. So, at least that part of the downstream economy shouldn't be a factor. Unless, that is, they insist on continuing to be truck drivers for coal mines, and living in the same place that they have always lived. But if they're going to be intransigent, then I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. Please note, my uncle is a truck driver, and I've heard a lot about the industry from his personal experience. I do actually have a lot of sympathy for truck drivers in general. But this is a transportation industry, and they have to go where the jobs are.
  - subway 8y ago
    Sure -- in theory all the regional jobs should be transferable to another region. That doesn't make it any less painful when a region's primary economic resource closes shop without a replacement. The absolute best case scenario, where everyone finds a happy new position elsewhere still results in a dead town filled with blighted property.
wtallis 8y ago
I think the biggest problem with the political issues surrounding coal is that it's so iconic an industry in the areas it operates. That makes it all too easy to overestimate the size and importance of the industry. In reality, it's been dwindling for a long time, though its complete death is by no means imminent.
- ethbro 8y ago
  And it's difficult (not unlike with the armed forces) to untangle respect with support for expansion. I respect the hell out of anyone who mines coal for a living. It's gotten safer, but it's still a tough job that I'm glad I don't have to do. I absolutely oppose anything that expands the coal industry. So how do I square those? Personally, I feel like we as a country owe the folks who did that work maybe a bit more than we would others. And if that happens to also be a more a practical approach to transitioning our economy off a toxic energy source? So much the better.
xapata 8y ago
> What makes coal special? The coal industry is a larger portion of the economic activity of the states it's in. The airline industry is diffused across the country. Helping the coal industry is kind-of like gerrymandering.
smogcutter 8y ago
> What makes coal special? Coal workers are important because the suburban whites who make up the GOP's voting base identify with them.
yborg 8y ago
How many hedge fund managers are there in the US? And yet they have a special provision in the tax code that they pay a maximum income tax rate of 15%. You could just cut a $200K check to every single coal miner and cost half what the carried interest loophole costs the US Treasury - every year.
FooHentai 8y ago
>but why does the rest of the country/world need to be held off any progress on this issue for the sake of a relatively small group? That seems to miss the parent poster's main point, which was proposing a way of making progress on this issue.
ZeroGravitas 8y ago
Coal is "special" because the economic benefits can be funneled narrowly and that allows oligarchs to get rich and pay off the government so they get richer. One such oligarch was just revealed to have written 6 of Trumps excecutive actions on coal energy.
Spooky23 8y ago
It’s a misleading statistic. Probably 500k more workers are employed in railroads, power plants, trucking companies, schools, etc. All dependent on coal. Using those numbers is like saying that only data center support workers work in tech. Every pair of hands at AWS probably supports 1000x people downstream.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

The airline industry is scattered all over the country. If you lose your airline job in, say, Chicago, there are a lot of other jobs in Chicago. But coal is the backbone of a big chunk of Appalachia. If you lose your coal job in Welch, West Virginia, there's nothing else. And if there are a few other jobs, the number of laid-off coal-related people absolutely swamps the openings.

empath75 8y ago
So move people away, bulldoze the towns and let it return to nature.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jbattle 8y ago
Honestly, I'd love if our society chose to be more generous and invest in retraining workers across the board. But if someone loses their job in Welch, West Virginia, and there's nothing else ... they might need to move. How is it different from steel jobs drying up in Gary IN? Or automobile jobs in Detroit? Or fishing jobs in Maine? Or tobacco jobs in ... wherever tobacco was grown
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ethbro 8y ago
  > tobacco The Carolinas and Virginia, I think. And you're right, it's not that different. The only thing I'd say is that I believe steel jobs were a bit slower of a transition. I believe most of the slide took place in the 60s - 80s as lower cost Japanese steel took off? Tobacco is also somewhat replaceable. If you were planting it, you can plant other things. So the glide path is a bit easier.
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    Most of the lost coal mining jobs were also lost in decades past: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES1021210001 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES1021210001 Set the "from" date back to 1985 (earliest year available in this UI). There were 170,500 American coal mining jobs in January 1985. When Obama entered office in January 2009, there were 86,400.
    - ethbro 8y ago
      Point. So I guess the jobs left are the last of the industry. The irony is that production of coal seems to have increased (see top graph; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_St... ) since 1970. Goes to show the power of political narrative vs a reality of automation. But I suppose even for the companies it's a lot easier to blame Washington than tell people you bought a $250,000 machine to replace them.
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        > The irony is that production of coal seems to have increased I think that's the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. But that's all strip mining with giant machines. It's more capital and fewer workers. > But I suppose even for the companies it's a lot easier to blame Washington than tell people you bought a $250,000 machine to replace them. It's more like: somebody else bought a $250,000 machine to replace them five states away.

subway 8y ago

I think a big part of it is that airline industry is typically co-located in cities with large numbers of other jobs, allowing a region to soak up the loss a little more easily. In coal dependent regions, the mining jobs create downstream jobs in transportation and general support of mining towns. This means when a mine shuts down, along with it go other local jobs, from gas station attendants to truck drivers and freight train conductors.

bradknowles 8y ago
There's already a major shortage of truck drivers in this country. Maybe not where the mines are, but elsewhere. But if they're truck drivers, then they should be able to drive trucks elsewhere, for other industries. So, at least that part of the downstream economy shouldn't be a factor. Unless, that is, they insist on continuing to be truck drivers for coal mines, and living in the same place that they have always lived. But if they're going to be intransigent, then I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. Please note, my uncle is a truck driver, and I've heard a lot about the industry from his personal experience. I do actually have a lot of sympathy for truck drivers in general. But this is a transportation industry, and they have to go where the jobs are.
- subway 8y ago
  Sure -- in theory all the regional jobs should be transferable to another region. That doesn't make it any less painful when a region's primary economic resource closes shop without a replacement. The absolute best case scenario, where everyone finds a happy new position elsewhere still results in a dead town filled with blighted property.

wtallis 8y ago

I think the biggest problem with the political issues surrounding coal is that it's so iconic an industry in the areas it operates. That makes it all too easy to overestimate the size and importance of the industry. In reality, it's been dwindling for a long time, though its complete death is by no means imminent.

ethbro 8y ago
And it's difficult (not unlike with the armed forces) to untangle respect with support for expansion. I respect the hell out of anyone who mines coal for a living. It's gotten safer, but it's still a tough job that I'm glad I don't have to do. I absolutely oppose anything that expands the coal industry. So how do I square those? Personally, I feel like we as a country owe the folks who did that work maybe a bit more than we would others. And if that happens to also be a more a practical approach to transitioning our economy off a toxic energy source? So much the better.

xapata 8y ago

> What makes coal special? The coal industry is a larger portion of the economic activity of the states it's in. The airline industry is diffused across the country. Helping the coal industry is kind-of like gerrymandering.

smogcutter 8y ago

> What makes coal special? Coal workers are important because the suburban whites who make up the GOP's voting base identify with them.

yborg 8y ago

How many hedge fund managers are there in the US? And yet they have a special provision in the tax code that they pay a maximum income tax rate of 15%. You could just cut a $200K check to every single coal miner and cost half what the carried interest loophole costs the US Treasury - every year.

FooHentai 8y ago

>but why does the rest of the country/world need to be held off any progress on this issue for the sake of a relatively small group? That seems to miss the parent poster's main point, which was proposing a way of making progress on this issue.

ZeroGravitas 8y ago

Coal is "special" because the economic benefits can be funneled narrowly and that allows oligarchs to get rich and pay off the government so they get richer. One such oligarch was just revealed to have written 6 of Trumps excecutive actions on coal energy.

Spooky23 8y ago

It’s a misleading statistic. Probably 500k more workers are employed in railroads, power plants, trucking companies, schools, etc. All dependent on coal. Using those numbers is like saying that only data center support workers work in tech. Every pair of hands at AWS probably supports 1000x people downstream.