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Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
3,997 posts, read 4,145,129 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robertbrianbush
But it is a change we need to make. We can find other jobs and careers, but we only have one planet.
Yes we do need to make the change, and yes we only have one planet. The problem is so many of you seem to think we can make the change overnight with total disregard for the humans involved. I sure would hate to be a 50-year-old miner in today's economy trying to find a "new" career. Somehow I doubt burger flipper at McDonald's is how he figured he'd end his career. I find it ironic, that so many care about how illegals and other human issues are a top priority to you, but those same folks can't show a bit of compassion for a hard-working blue-collar worker from West Virginia.....
Maybe it’s not exactly gonna make you rich or famous but earning a decent living and providing for your family is fulfillment in it’s own right. The average starting wage for a miner (when the mines are running) was $60,000 a year in 2010 which is nothing to sneeze at. Not everyone is able to or even cut out to go to college and be a doctor, lawyer, or white collar professional. There are plenty of jobs, many very good paying, out there for people willing to learn a skill or get dirty.
That is why we need jobs back. We need to make things again. Service job, is just that, service. Nothing is made.
As for the danger, because of the amount of regulation and all the reforms pushed through by unions over the last century, I am sure a lot of hard working Americans would rather go into a mine than deliver pizza somewhere.
I have a friend talked about being a contract miner. If I remember this correctly, he said he could be able to make 200 dollars a day. I've been doing research, and one article says that some contract miner can make up to 400 dollars a day.
Why people can not work this type of jobs? Not everybody can be a doctor or a lawyer. Just because you are one of those "elite", doesn't mean you can throw the working class under the bus.
Coal mining does not the "working class" make.
Hell, I work. Do you work?
I resent the notion that digging up coal is a more respectable career than the thousands of other jobs one could choose.
You can go wire houses or plumb toilets and make more money...and robots are not replacing those careers at present.
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Well, it is pretty far removed from the massive destruction that comes with mining, but whatever. Natural gas isn't just attractive for its environmental friendliness anyway.
Well, then I guess it's a good thing no one has tried to pull off the sudden destruction of the coal industry.
You do realize that mining employment in places like WV has been declining for over half a century now, right?
See, we don't live in a country with a centrally planned economy. The coal industry isn't dying through government fiat. It's dying because there are other forms of energy production that are more attractive, and that's especially true for places like WV with difficult terrain and where decades of mining has made it increasingly expensive and difficult to keep extracting.
This is what Trump and the former miners who voted for him don't get. Government can't just magically reignite a dying industry. Maybe with some relaxed environmental and mine safety regulations a mine will open here and there for a little while, but in a year or two the situation will look just like now - unemployed and snorting crushed up oxy with giant "Friends of Coal" signs stuck in the front yards of their crumbling houses, waiting to cast their next ballot for a politician who tells them they can have good paying steady work without having to learn anything new or adapt at all.
Yes, they do. And in exchange they get laid off routinely and wind up with respiratory illnesses. And that's the lucky ones who don't wind up dead or disabled in a mining accident.
Jason,
Most of the natural gas in the world is in the Middle East, and Russia. But to extract and distribute natural gas is not as pretty as you make it sound. After the gas has been extracted, it has to be compressed, and stored. Pipelines cross the US have to be built to reach the distribution points, and so on. Don't you see all the opposition to the building of pipelines in recent years?
Isn't the point of this thread to show how bad coal is? Do you think that petroleum fuels, or even nuclear energy are any better in the long run? The use of coal has been declining because there are other sources of energy that are cheaper to produce. That's the bottom line.
To make coal burn clean takes a lot more money than other materials.
This said, There is nevertheless a broad problem in coal country. Many miners have lost their jobs, either to automation or to mines being closed. Most of them have no other skills or training, and there are few industries operating near their homes where they might be retrained and employed. Large-scale layoffs of miners means that other businesses are also closing, so there are few jobs of any sort which might provide incomes for the miners and their families.
What are we going to do to help these people? Tell them, you should go out get an education because life isn't fair? Give me a break?
The principal solution for these people is the same as it has always been whenever employment opportunities vanish in some area. Move out, to somewhere that jobs exist or where one can be self-sufficient living off the land. I have couple of friends who joined the Marine Corps, what else could they do?
Yes, but even the more remote areas are within a few hours drive of more prosperous cities in neighboring states. I do realize, though, that many don't have a couple of grand just laying around to move on. Maybe we could provide some relocation assistance, could be grants or loans, to those in certain dying industries along with retraining?
Some just think that the government or society has some sort of duty to ensure high paying jobs in whatever little locale they happen to already be in. That wasn't our attitude years ago...remember we are the nation that is mostly descended from immigrants and that got on covered wagons to cross the continent. A nation based on going where the opportunity and the need is, and on technological progress, which means that their are always industries that are going to be going obsolete as new ones arise.
Nuclear works. Perhaps a decrease in demand would help. Ban gas guzzlers.
Aluminum production needs vast amounts of electricity we didn't have that capability till the TVA was built during FDR's New Deal before WW2.Aluminum was vital in the war effort and it would take a s#!t pot load of wind and solar panels to generate that amount of power.
Unfortunately, the Trump people have no understanding of energy or energy policy.
Exactly correct!
Look at the energy idiots Trump has gathered about him... the likes of Rex Tillerson and everyone knows any grade school teacher in America knows more about energy than he does!
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