Coal - Appalachia's failed Capitalistic experiment-Long read

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Lengthy article takes the reader from the 17th Century where mountain folk traded their mineral rights for hogs and rifles to company stores and company towns to the importing of European workers (my family) to work the mines to Trump's promises.
Well worth the time reading.

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"Trump, like generations of Appalachian politicians, says that he’s trying to save coal for the sake of the people. But the problem that he’s solving for isn’t how to invest in making people healthier and better educated. Nor is it how to make their children’s lives better or to expand their families’ opportunities.

Rather, the problem Trump is intent on solving is how best to give vast, distant corporations more opportunities. To revive an old oligopoly, instead of innovating new work. To subsidize producing more coal, instead of spending on making the region’s people more valuable. To stake the region’s future on a finite resource, at the expense of the ultimate renewable one—human potential."

https://qz.com/1167671/the-100-year-capitalist-experiment-that-keeps-appalachia-poor-sick-and-stuck-on-coal/