4 ms·

This is so true it's painful. I feel bad for these people. I really do. The writing has been on the wall for decades that coal is a bad horse to back, and po

This is so true it's painful. I feel bad for these people. I really do. The writing has been on the wall for decades that coal is a bad horse to back, and poverty is keeping their options limited. This is another example of why we need a better social safety net. Let's retrain those people with skills that will better suit them and their families. There is no reason that they should suffer with this dead-end life/career/poverty.

fludlight 7y ago
Retraining isn’t as effective as one might hope. For one, it is cheaper to retrain large number of people in a handful of fields than a handful of people in a large number of fields. So you get an oversupply of, say, HVAC installers. Second, many of these miners (and factory workers) live in company towns. Once the company leaves the town slowly dies due to economic suffocation. The stores, plumbers, schools, doctors, etc that used to sell services to the miners now have fewer customers because people slowly move out and the ones that stay have less money because the mining jobs are gone. It would be better to bulldoze the towns and relocate everyone to places that aren’t dying but, unsurprisingly, people don’t like that. There are hundreds of small towns like this across America that have been hoping for a new company to come and save them for decades. When a new company comes along they want to pay low wages and no taxes, and desperate local politicians acquiesce.
jfengel 7y ago
My understanding is that the targets of this resent social safety nets. They view them as demeaning, especially since they are capable of work. But the only work traditionally available in the region is coal mining, and that won't be fixed by retraining. So they see the coal, and the ability to work, and grow resentful that they are forbidden from putting these two things together. They are also attached to the places, and do not wish to leave. Retraining for new jobs in cities, or even different rural areas, means leaving longstanding family homes. I need to note that I'm not an expert. I'm speaking here thirdhand at best. But I'll note that in the last Presidential election, when asked to choose between a candidate who promised retraining and social safety nets versus one who promised to re-open the coal mines, they overwhelmingly chose the latter.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "They are also attached to the places, and do not wish to leave" That's kind of a distorted way to look at it. People do leave, and then they aren't included in the population that's under the microscope. So the remainder is always being distilled down, no matter how bad things get, until the outside world decides they can be ignored. Same thing with farmers in the 20th century.

fludlight 7y ago

Retraining isn’t as effective as one might hope. For one, it is cheaper to retrain large number of people in a handful of fields than a handful of people in a large number of fields. So you get an oversupply of, say, HVAC installers. Second, many of these miners (and factory workers) live in company towns. Once the company leaves the town slowly dies due to economic suffocation. The stores, plumbers, schools, doctors, etc that used to sell services to the miners now have fewer customers because people slowly move out and the ones that stay have less money because the mining jobs are gone. It would be better to bulldoze the towns and relocate everyone to places that aren’t dying but, unsurprisingly, people don’t like that. There are hundreds of small towns like this across America that have been hoping for a new company to come and save them for decades. When a new company comes along they want to pay low wages and no taxes, and desperate local politicians acquiesce.

jfengel 7y ago

My understanding is that the targets of this resent social safety nets. They view them as demeaning, especially since they are capable of work. But the only work traditionally available in the region is coal mining, and that won't be fixed by retraining. So they see the coal, and the ability to work, and grow resentful that they are forbidden from putting these two things together. They are also attached to the places, and do not wish to leave. Retraining for new jobs in cities, or even different rural areas, means leaving longstanding family homes. I need to note that I'm not an expert. I'm speaking here thirdhand at best. But I'll note that in the last Presidential election, when asked to choose between a candidate who promised retraining and social safety nets versus one who promised to re-open the coal mines, they overwhelmingly chose the latter.

perl4ever 7y ago
"They are also attached to the places, and do not wish to leave" That's kind of a distorted way to look at it. People do leave, and then they aren't included in the population that's under the microscope. So the remainder is always being distilled down, no matter how bad things get, until the outside world decides they can be ignored. Same thing with farmers in the 20th century.