Some of these workers have known only mining all their lives, and the prospect of moving elsewhere for work probably doesn't appeal to them. Despite all the downsides, they are determined to hold on to what they know, and the paychecks associated with it.

New jobs can be created. We have to stop mining coal.

Or have sufficient income while they are retrained. Or that these new jobs will be in the towns that they live in now.

and yet there is no shortage of coal miners in the U.S.

$$$$ makes people do crazy things.

What job can a 54 year old get? That's what needs answered and helped. As far as cancer goes, even doctors get cancer.

Not a good comparison

It's good to recognize that there are choices to be made.

When the mine is the only thing around that's hiring, it begins to look like a good choice.

It's not about 'appeal' it's about ability. Who's going to pay to feed their family while daddy learns a new skill? Who's going to help with first month and last month's rent and deposit when they decide to up and move to somewhere else? Leave their home of three, four generations and go.. somewhere. No clue where..

With a username like "X digger," are you a former miner? Or is that handle entirely unrelated?

I spent part of my childhood on Canada's east coast. I can tell you that as the fisheries were dying out, unemployment skyrocketed and retraining offered few promising opportunities. To this day there is little in the way of meaningful jobs out there. Call centers are one of the few "industries" that have set up shop, but they are low-end jobs.

Lots of east coasters regularly got on and off planes for 2 week in/2 week out rotations in the western oilfields. For many of them, that option came crashing to a halt a couple of years ago when oil prices collapsed.

Automation has taken a serious bite out of employment as well. Not the easiest time to be creating jobs. Obama has done well on that front, but, as has been pointed out, the majority of those new jobs are part-time and closer to minimum wage.

Spend three to five years living packed together in small apartments or houses, sending what they earned home. Maybe earn enough to bring the family out there.

Of course with the factory economy drying up, they eventually had to come home permanently. There's a whole generation of hillbillies who's kids speak kinda funny because they spent time growing up in Skokie, Cicero, or Detroit.

and it's up to each person whether that sacrifice is worth it or not. In an ideal world, there would be a chance to work in our own backyards. But that is not reality for a whole lot of people, unfortunately.

Maybe that fear is greater for them than it would be for you. Maybe the don't have any possibility of "good healthy jobs" as an alternative.

But really, sucks for them, but the bottom line is we have to stop mining coal.

In the logging industry (Pacific Northwest). In fact, I had two cousins that were killed in logging accidents when they were 19 and 20 years old. Another friend from high school died in the woods shortly after his wife (my cousin) had her third child.

Those who remain are all huuuuge Trump supporters. I don't know that he's even visited Idaho and talked about logging, but they just KNOW that he's gonna bring back the logging.

The sad thing is that there is still logging, but it's done by big companies, and they don't hire locals (I am told). The local mill closed down during the Reagan administration and the logs are transported 70 miles away and loaded on ships to be processed elsewhere.

Even when there was a mill in town, they made 2x4s and other lumber, but there weren't follow on industries to optimize the wealth of the extracted natural resource.

Small town folk are scared and angry. They are that way because they are uneducated.

If you ever expect to see this change, it will require entrepreneurial education and available markets for locally produced products. In places where cottage industries spring up on their own, such attitudes exist, but if your plan (anyone's plan) requires people to leave their community to better their lives, too many folks will reject it out of fear.

Trump doesn't have a solution, but they believe that the system is the problem, and he is from outside the system. It will be tough to convince them otherwise and when Trump gets trounced in November, they will be even angrier.

Or they can fill out surveys and enter contests.

Will this data center employ coal miners?

Over 500 workers were rendered jobless by the closure of the Alabama's Widows Creek Fossil Plant. Google plans for 75-100 full-time employees. If I were a betting man, I'd wager those old coal miners won't be among them.

Romney got 62% of vote in 2012. Many would be behind Trump's bigotry whether coal was involved or not.

Not only the pay but it's a fun job. When you've have a good shift and run 400 feet with your super section there's satisfaction in producing a big ole pile of coal.

We stopped in a local car lot a few months ago when looking for a 4D pickup after selling the rock crawler Jeep that I never drove. The salesmen pointed to several sports cars on the lot that miners had traded or sold because the toys have to go when they lose their jobs. There was a Roush Mustang, Saleen mustang, and 2 Vetts sitting side by side that he said laid off miners had ditched. These are guys that are used to making 100-150k a year without college.


WE just need someone that wants coal to get the industry rolling again.

Do you really think the coal industry SHOULD get going again?

but, I do biomedical research

Class privilege is a thing, and you're soaking in it.

we just can't continue to put that much pollution into our atmosphere

the people who manufactured typewriters and buggy whips were distressed to see their jobs go away too!!

We need to develop new industries with better jobs for the people of West Virginia and other coal producing states.

Have a look at this.

http://bit.ly/2bK94r2

Zoom in, then go to street view anywhere. There is a ribbon of road carved from almost vertical mountains, and the creek/river. A little bit of flood plain. That's it.

Today not so much.

There's also a large amount of knowledge acquired over the years to do it effectively and safely, so workers will naturally develop a sense of pride as they become more experienced and adept at the work.

I've worked at several factories where various plastic parts were made, and I'd often question why we were manufacturing so much stuff that would probably end up floating in the ocean someday. Nevertheless, the manufacturing of those parts to specification required knowledge and skill, and workers took pride in that aspect of it.

levels of intellect and intelligence and ability. For some people, the best they can ever be IS a coal miner, or a laborer, or a janitor, or a cleaner, or a dish washer. It just is what it is, and it's all they can ever be, and they don't aspire to anything else in life. A wooden shack in the hills of Tennessee is just fine, it's all they ever knew and they don't know from wanting anything else.

It doesn't mean they're bad people, it doesn't mean they don't have common sense, but perhaps we can safely say they're not the best and brightest of the population.

Every person has a place in the echelons of society. Some people can transcend their perhaps 'lower' 'place' in life and move up the social ladder, but usually it's generational.

To deny this reality just isn't logical. Yes, humans are all created equal, but that's in the rights sense, not in the social sense.

There are some people who stay in one place, and others who move, migrate, travel, and evolve. If you stay in one place, you die. If you keep moving, you survive and flourish as a civilization.

If someone offered me a job paying 85K in a region where the average income is 39K, I'd have to be a fool not to take it.

http://www.nma.org/pdf/c_wages_state_industries.pdf

I've turned down higher paying jobs over moral reasons.

I also tend to feel guilty if I'm not suffering at work while I see others suffering there -- e.g., at places where people are doing hard physical labor while management mostly stands around and watches.

EDIT: Desire for money and "things" is a contributing factor as well. If you don't desire something very much, you're not likely going to work hard at acquiring it. My dumbest brother is the most wealthy among my siblings today. He never had any interest in academics, and it shocked me how he couldn't grasp basic trigonometry when I tutored him. He always loved money, though.

either.

There is no shame in not being smart. But it takes a whole lot of stupid to be a trump supporter.

You're right, smart people get the best paying job they can.

You're right, smart people get the best paying job they can.

offer him a job to do anything. (except for putin, I guess, and even then, he'd be kicked to the curb once putin was done with him)

Trump buys and sell property, makes business deals, and manages investments, but he doesn't do it for anyone else, he does it for himself. And, his track record is pathetic. The reason he won't release his tax returns is because his income is tragic. He's pretty much running a ponzi scheme with all his businesses, raiding one to pay the bills on the others, etc, and it's a spinning circle with a million legs.

He's going to be exposed pretty soon for the crooked, corrupt con man that he is. And you can bet the IRS is looking very closely at his BS right now... That would be the October surprise we can expect I think. You can bet that the Obama administration is preparing a nice tidy package of truth and reality on trump to the American people. He'll be going down in flames in about 6 -8 weeks.

nt

I could've used better examples... comparing a stock trader to an astrophysicist, for example.

I knew people in college who dropped out of science programs because they couldn't keep up. They majored in business instead, and many of them are surely doing better financially compared to PhD's in those fields of science.

I saw Bill Gates on some computer trivia TV show many years ago. He didn't know the answers to basic computer trivia! I only took a few computer science courses in college and I generally felt repulsed by the computer geeks in those classes, but I would've wiped the floor with him on that show.

His opportunity was having a father who was a lawyer, buying DOS from someone else who created it and later arranging a contract with IBM that effectively gave his company an early monopoly in PC software. Much of the wealth in this country can be attributed to how contracts are written.

All other things being equal (the work being effectively the same), I'll concede that people will tend to pick the higher paying jobs.

... with computer technology as an overly-narrow focus in this world.

I always had the highest grades in those classes and programmed better than the other students. It was pretty easy for me. I didn't have their passion for it, though.

Maybe repulsed wasn't the best word. I should've said that I thought their narrow-minded focus struck me as odd... like people in high school who "lived" for working on cars and gawking at car magazines.

I realize that kind of passion often translates into financial success in our division-of-labor economic set-up, though.

I don't feel a narrow focus is odd at all. In fact I respect people with a deep understanding in a narrow field.

Compared to the typical computer science major that I met in college, I could have intelligent conversations across a wide range of topics with the mathematicians and physicists. They specialized in their fields too, but were much broader in their interests and curiosity.

That was my experience at school over 20 years ago, but it might be different at other places or times.

Not everyone has the mental capacity to be a computer programmer, engineer, or scientist, and there are not enough of those jobs available anyway.

We are rapidly becoming a society where having average or below average intelligence condemns you to poverty because blue-collar jobs are disappearing due to automation, and the only answer is a guaranteed minimum income. Unfortunately we as a society are stuck in a "you have to earn your living" mentality and any politician proposing a GMI rather than jobs is committing political suicide.

Promises made promises broken....would u trust us?

We babble about plans... nothing gets thru Congress nothing gets implemented

Ever

The Industrial Revolution started in Britain due in large part to the fact that we had plentiful supplies of coal to fuel steam engines, and in later years power stations. Coal was the most important industry in Britain for many, many years and the British Labour party became a major force in politics thanks to the power of the miners.

In old pit villages you had a situation going back generations where people left school and went straight off to work down the mines. it was the only life people in many pit villages knew. And when the mines shut it was utterly devastating for those communities.

Some of the old pit villages are recovering well from the closure of the mines, others are still in a dreadful state.

Also worth remembering that old pit villages tend to be very insular places. Outsiders of any description are often looked on with suspicion, which can easily turn into strongly anti-immigrant sentiment, or just plain old fashioned prejudice.

Lathes make cannons

... you can't refine, cast, or forge those metals without coal.

Then you need even more coal to drive the steam engines pulling locomotives and make things work in factories!

Forged Cannons was already the technology of the day and they couldn't withstand the heavier loads nor did they shoot very straight (think Cannon Balls)

Steel Barrels with rifling down the barrel was brought about by the invention of the lathe

There's a reason why my hometown of Sheffield is the birthplace of stainless steel. Ready supplies of both Iron Ore and plenty of local Coal.

The current state of the steel industry is another major issue round here.

doesn't matter which country you produce it in.

that is why china is quietly building Nukes

For the Physics Challenged - it takes X - amount of BTU to melt Metal - doesn't matter which country you do it in. It can be done in the "Open Hearth Coal Fired Furnace" as in China or produced in American Induction (Electric) Furnaces with a fraction of pollutants released.

So much for the proponents of "Outsourcing Pollution"

As for the "Mystery Metal" china produces from all that scrap it is worthless for any hi-Tech or Aircraft applications

But it does well for cheap goods sold to America

It's having a really bad effect on the local steel industry.

Where I grew up in Kentucky!

Not everybody has the ability to just pack up and leave, and there are towns that are dependent on the coal mines, and will practically become ghost towns once the mine shuts down.

Your question is a bit like asking. "why doesn't somebody on welfare just get a higher paying job".

Sometimes those jobs just don't exist, and sometimes they don't have the skills for those jobs.

If someone posted such a thread here, it would get juried and removed in a heartbeat.

But you're right, the question posed in the OP (by a biomedical researcher) really isn't much different.

Lately I've been reading queries, "Are the Democrats becoming the party of coastal elites?"

Threads like this aren't helping.

realization that not everyone is the same until, well, someone tells them.

Many people don't realize that for some people, welfare is as good as it's ever going to get and it really is just the best they can do. For countless, often indiscernible reasons, many people are virtually unemployable.

Look at the guy crumpled on a curb, clutching an empty bottle of booze, rotted teeth, matted hair, stinking and greasy. 'He should get a job'. Well, who would hire him?

The woman with 4 kids under the age of 5, on welfare, living in a rat hole. Who would hire her? The best she could possibly ever do is collect bottles for pennies. Some people just aren't capable of doing any better, that's the reality. Clearly these are people not capable of making good choices. And you know what? They're still entitled to basic and genuine decency and respect until their character is determined. For all we know they're good people who just can't do any better.

Elites? Every society has them. Dregs? Every society has them too.

My earliest political memory is my dad ranting about Arthur Scargill while I was playing with my toys.

So not sympathetic to Arthur Scargill at all no.

In fairness though, he really should have called a ballot before initiating the strike.

Not everyone is like you. Deal with it.

a horrible job that is terrible for the environment?

Watch Pride... London gays and lesbians supporting striking Welsh coal miners in Thatcher's 1984.

I'm guessing many of them don't think it's a "horrible job," but would view wearing a tie and sitting at a desk all day in front of a computer the pits (pardon the pun).

I'm a vegan, but if I need to feed my kids and pay my bills I'll work in a slaughterhouse.

It's not just fear of losing a 'job' - coal mining is, as you say, a way of life for them. Their father, grandfather...all coal miners, and many are proud of what they do. They are now seeing that way of life slipping away so they feel threatened and afraid.

Making 30 bucks an hour mining compared to 10 bucks at WalMart? Who would choose the latter when they have a family and mouths to feed?

I'm not defending coal-mining. Just trying to explain that from where the miners sit, they have no other options.

about its being generational.

And not many people realize that coal miners make a lot of money.

From the beginning of coal mining in WV, there has been a lot of pride--patriotic pride--that miners produced the material that kept America moving and producing. It was an essential industry, and everyone knew it. Even when the railroads began using diesel power and household heating switched to natural gas, there was still a huge and important place for coal in manufacturing.

These miners not only feel left behind by technology and abandoned by the left wing which historically represented their interests and now worries about carbon emissions, they feel betrayed by the country they helped build. No wonder they grasp at any straw offered them. The right wing, with its astounding ability to convince poor people to vote against their own best interests, has been that straw ever since JFK.

I don't know what the answer is, but something must be done for these families to help them move into the 21st century.

That's the way I view it. They need help -- not just "plans" thrown at them.

They can't see a future once coal is done. History has demonstrated to them that when the coal mine closes, life becomes even more difficult. Without a clear picture of where do they go from here they will continue to vote against their own interests.

Someone needs to prove that they can find new, better lives after coal.

After a while you stop listening.

It's easy to sit back and be judgmental when it's not your life being destroyed. I don't agree with these people but I understand where they're coming from.

All show and no go

Every so often, some retraining / new industry / economic redevelopment plan will be announced, with huge expectations that always peter out to be 10-20 jobs that typically get snatched up by political cronies.

like our central cities


we promise but never deliver.

due to clean energy, wind, solar.

The repugs keep saying "clean coal", as Bill Maher says, "you can tell by the way they look when they come out of the mines".

They mine owners don't care the least about the workers, just greedily filling their pockets.

to just leave. Just pack up and leave, people! The Triangle is booming... why can't NC politicians figure out what to do with poor rural counties?

I understand why people don't leave, but the government can't create jobs everywhere so unemployment will be virtually equal everywhere.

At some point, in order to improve your situation, you have to be wiling to take a leap. We left our family and friends and moved so we could make a better life for our kids.

i have known one coal miner in 30 years. Those jobs have been going away since the 70s. I have never heard one person in Kentucky express the desire to be a coal miner. But in a lot of areas mining has been the only good paying job for generations. Until the 80s one down here would have relied on mining as a default or last resort job to make a decent living. But the world has moved on from coal. We all know that we need massive investment in training and infrastructure from the government. But the rethug machine has bred such a distrust of the Feds and a disdain for government spending that now Walmart has replaced mining as the go to. So most people vote on social issues against their own interest. They aren't dumber than the average American, just so absolutely inundated in rep propaganda that the whole area has become a right wing echo chamber where you have no chance at normalcy unless you walk the walk and talk the talk in public.

I was astounded by the condescension in this op.

I sympathize, but it is, and should be, a dying industry. FYI, the solar industry is adding more jobs every year than the coal industry loses.

We moved there from Indianapolis when I was a teen. The area had been underground mining but eventually switched to strip mining. One of the first things that new neighbors wanted to take us to see was the huge shovel they used in mining the area. The local school had a miner as a mascot and their team name was The Miners. They have a tremendous pride in it because coal was so necessary to the country for so long, and they helped provide it. There were long lines of people waiting to be hired in the mines and anyone who finally snagged a job there felt like a king in an area where there was little else to do.

Now they're brainwashed into thinking that the government is killing their jobs. People in their 40s and 50s who have done nothing else are desperate to keep the jobs that have provided for them all these years. They think they're too old to learn something new, or to even be considered for a new type of work. The nearest place they might be hired is 50 miles away. They're looking for a savior. I wouldn't vote for Trump with a gun to my head, but some of them will vote for him because they're looking for someone that might save them and they see what they want to see.

They were willing to do anything to take care of their families. Unlike today they were Democrats and always told me that Democrats were for working people and Republicans were for the rich.

The miners of today are politically misguided, but those jobs still pay the bills quite well. I will complain about them going off the rails politically, but I'll be DAMNED if I criticize someone for working their asses off in a thankless job like that.

If anyone knows when the new, good paying, clean jobs are on their way to eastern Kentucky, where I grew up, please enlighten us.

WHY do we always have to have this argument about jobs versus the environment?

Arguing jobs are more important than anything else always struck me as a Republican position.

Jobs aren't more important in the grand scheme of things, but if we expect people to be happy with giving up their livelihoods without good jobs to replace them, then we don't have a clue how to get out of this fucking ivory tower, and they will buy into the false claims of saving coal that the Republicans make.

We can't tell people to eat shit and die and expect them to vote for Democrats.

But historically this promise to create new jobs has been a hard sell for Dems, I don't know how much is poor messaging or that Republicans keep blocking Dem programs.

There has to be some way to fight that. Right wing radio goes all out hysterical about bringing wind power companies to coal country and such. We have just not found a way to battle their media.

These were well-paying, unionized jobs with benefits and pensions. They supported families.

Without the coal jobs, there are no other jobs for many, and those that are left are minimum wage without benefits and pensions.

There are no other options. There won't be any other options. The federal government is not providing any other options, and it won't, because it can't.

A regulatory change destroyed these peoples' lives and, often, their children's futures, and they are angry over it.

I now live in WV. My husband was born in a coal camp. His family lived in a company house and were paid in scrip. He told me about the fight to get a union. How many people in the US ever heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain? Generations of coal miners fought for better working conditions and better pay. Many lost their lives trying to make things better for themselves and their children. Coal mining is a way of life in these hills.

When I first moved here in 1972, coal was booming. My husband even got a job in the coal mines for a while. The future looked good. But things slowly changed and in my county now there is only one large mine still in operation. Our county revenues are down and the future is not bright. The Republicans blamed President Obama for the downturn because of government regulation, when in fact , it was market forces that led to the present situation. WV turned from blue to red hoping the Republicans would bring about a change in their situation. Our state even passed right-to-work legislation. My husband would turn over in his grave seeing what has happened. As I ride around I see Trump signs everywhere, along with bumper stickers that say "Friends of Coal' and advocating 'clean coal' which is itself an oxymoron.

None of my children or grandchildren ever worked in the mines They all went to college and pursued other careers. However, as a retired high school teacher I know of many young men who didn't have the options that my children did. They usually had 3 major choices- mining, logging, or the military. It is a fact that percentage-wise WV has lost more men fighting for our country than any other state. These men and their family are trying to keep and maintain their proud heritage.

As a proud WV Democrat and Bernie supporter, I oppose everything that Trump stands for, but I can understand the appeal that his slogan "Make America Great Again" has for these Mountaineers.

This option would only hurt our planet - although our governor in NM could care less and is thinking of exporting NM's coal because we are between $300,000 to $500,000 million in debt in our state due to drop in oil prices.

One of the most condescending posts I have ever read.

The Left keeps asking "Why don't working class whites vote for us, we have their real interests at heart."

Then statements like this are made. You have insulted an entire group of people, their way of life and their means of livelihood. But, that's OK isn't it?

BTW, the environment is not the first issue of concern for many people.

Nobody gives a shit about blue collar people.

It is just getting worse as time passes.

But yes, I agree. People fail to see how talking down to people turns them off.

This.

As I posted elsewhere in the thread, I too was utterly gobsmacked by the condescension.

Not connected to global warming???? One coal-fired power plant can emit 13,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Seems pretty obvious. Why did loggers want to continue logging old growth in the Pacific Northwest and destroy the remaining habitat for the Spotted Owl? Because that's what they know. Change is difficult for most people. It's not rocket surgery.

what an elitist question. Have you ever visited West Virginia? Not exactly a manufacturing bastion.