Electric Eye
Banned
Coal mining jobs was just a metaphor.
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Coal Mining Jobs Trump Would Bring Back No Longer Exist for Humans
- Thread starter Trojita
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That;s the idea and problem. When you start in the mines out of high school , they don't have the knowledge to do anything else, and at 40, 50, 60 they feel it's too late to go back to school or learn a new trade.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
The entire Republican Party is. Putting any emphasis on fucking COAL in this day and age is idiotic. It's horrible for everyone, the jobs are gone and not coming back, there are more efficient/cheaper/cleaner alternatives, and those alternatives have WAY more potential for job growth. There's literally nothing that wouldn't be improved by investing in them over coal.
Fixed
Milly Osworth
Member
Thanks Trump, for giving us back coal mining jobs. Both a healthy job for the workers AND it's good for the planet. win win!
I used air quotes.
TheSkullPrince
Member
We can't fail Mother Nature. It was here before us and it'll be here long after we're gone. Mother Nature has time, we don't.
Edit: Beaten by George Carlin
The problem is that coal regions never learned how to actually operate in the modern economy. Their culture got warped around the mines.
Same thing is happening in oil. The whole Midwest and South that are heavily dependant on energy jobs are about to get fucked to the nth degree.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/energy-environment/oil-jobs-technology.html
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/energy-environment/oil-jobs-technology.html
Welp, time to deport the robots.
Let's hear how Obama told you so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKpso3vhZtw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKpso3vhZtw
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
It's simultaneously fun and depressing watching Republicans who aren't coal miner families or politicians in the pocket of the coal industry (who combined are obviously a very small portion of the base) try and explain why holding onto coal is so good.
I had a remarkably frustrating argument with my dad that was just running in circles:
Him: "Killing coal is killing jobs!"
Me: "But focusing on other energy sources would create far more jobs that are much more sustainable."
Him: "The government shouldn't be 'picking winners' by investing in those industries!"
Me: "But you want them to find coal over those industries, that's 'picking a winner'."
Him: "That's because being energy independent is a matter of national security."
Me: "But we can achieve energy independence via investing in other energy sources."
Him: "The coal jobs!"
repeat
Also some random breaks about how that one time that one solar company funded by the government did something and "we can't force the transition!".
I had a remarkably frustrating argument with my dad that was just running in circles:
Him: "Killing coal is killing jobs!"
Me: "But focusing on other energy sources would create far more jobs that are much more sustainable."
Him: "The government shouldn't be 'picking winners' by investing in those industries!"
Me: "But you want them to find coal over those industries, that's 'picking a winner'."
Him: "That's because being energy independent is a matter of national security."
Me: "But we can achieve energy independence via investing in other energy sources."
Him: "The coal jobs!"
repeat
Also some random breaks about how that one time that one solar company funded by the government did something and "we can't force the transition!".
Yup. It's the resource curse. When your community get rich fast without having to put in the work, you don't know how to survive when the money stops flowing.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Which is why in an ideal world the Federal government would help those regions and those workers transition to new jobs in new energy sectors, as well as investing in more infrastructure development/maintenance to provide more lower skill physical jobs while also repairing our ailing infrastructure, but nooooooooooooooo. Fucking GOP.
Shake Appeal
Member
We need to stop Mexicans smuggling robots into this country.
The thing is that this isn't new. Population has been declining in these areas for over half a century. The people who can, move. The people who can't, or don't want to, stay, and they're the ones who keep voting.
edit: This is the population trend for the county Bernie did his recent town hall in -
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
Robots are going to make drugs then smuggle them into this country with drillbots and flying drones.
Hickbilly Deluxe
Banned
Once you are into your late 30s or early 40s, and all you have done is manual labor like coal mining, your options are pretty much pray the jobs come back or some other industry moves in that you can do, or die in poverty.
Mentosrock
Member
It's not a problem, since all of those people who would have been replaced by coal mining robot trucks are going to get jobs programming the robot trucks instead. Right? ...
this is horrible.
Given the jobs aren't coming back and the odds of a new industry saving the day are slim the real action to avoid poverty should be to push for income support and vote for people that agree to instigate feasible support.
Taking the route of voting for people telling you what want to hear but who can't deliver means you're going to die in poverty and fuck up others as you do.
The issue is lack of support for people caught up in transitioning industries not the fact the industry is transitioning.
Still working on them, they're being tested out. Feel bad for the people losing their jobs but it'll likely be safer with all the cameras and sensors.
I knew a couple via my ex-gf's family. They were well paid. Coal miners make goood money compared to where they live. When coal mining is in full production in a coal town, you can easily get a house, a car, some land, and make a living.
The moment that stops, take the neatly organized box your life is in, turn it upside down and dump everything into the dirt. Because single industry economies dont do "infrastructure" well, and they rarely care about the communities built up around them.
so these multigenerational coal miners never had to think of a different future. They just had to work hard and life would take care of the rest.
allow me to welcome you to Real America, coal miner buddy.
Yep, that and for the few that did, it'll prevent the operation of these large construction vehicles whilst impaired.
How about these people get over it and learn new skills instead of laying around whining and complaining about the past and jobs that will never return?
I'm half joking but I live in WV and these people sure love justifying their shit behavior because of jobs that disappeared due to various things other than "liberals."
I'm half joking but I live in WV and these people sure love justifying their shit behavior because of jobs that disappeared due to various things other than "liberals."
Rural America is the ground zero to what will happen to America en masse with the problem we've made in regards to jobs cults and automation.
Don't laugh too hard now, fam. That norm of depravity and precarity will spread, and I deeply worry the average American hasn't a fucking clue about how severe this issue will be...it's not just yeehaw hicks with black lung and the fear of gays and God, here.
Tomorrow it will be bank tellers, and then the week after that it will be truck drivers. Then, on Spring Break come various cognitive jobs delegated away, thus hours taken away, thus income taken away, which sustainability giving way.
Consider how foolish people are to believe the lead job losses came from trade. This is a position Bernie Sanders has argued. He's as wrong as Trump and those that believe this position are.
Don't laugh too hard now, fam. That norm of depravity and precarity will spread, and I deeply worry the average American hasn't a fucking clue about how severe this issue will be...it's not just yeehaw hicks with black lung and the fear of gays and God, here.
Tomorrow it will be bank tellers, and then the week after that it will be truck drivers. Then, on Spring Break come various cognitive jobs delegated away, thus hours taken away, thus income taken away, which sustainability giving way.
Consider how foolish people are to believe the lead job losses came from trade. This is a position Bernie Sanders has argued. He's as wrong as Trump and those that believe this position are.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
100%.
True and I agree but here's the thing, people are trying to find solutions to automation, actual problem solving rather than pretending mining jobs are going to be abundant like it was in the past.
Minimum mandatory income, social safety nets, government support to retrain into other fields.
But some people want to buy into rhetoric that Trump is selling and prioritise their delusions over the lives of others, including minorities & immigrants.
But they still get defensive when you call that out.
I agree about the Bernie Sanders comment as well.
Captain Tuttle
Member
Natural Gas killed coal, not automation, especially in Appalachia.
I manage an open pit Limestone aggregate mine in the Philadelphia Suburbs. We're automated to an extent but in no way could we automate our haul trucks. The mine is just not laid out for it. These trucks get used used in huge open pit mines out West; they're hundreds of acres with miles of roads. Appalachian coal mines are similar to my pit; smaller scale and older pits.
I employ 35 Union workers and 20 Non-Union. It's one of the few places left where a kid can graduate High School with no real skills, work for us and with a good amount of overtime and hard work can make $60,000/yr with their health insurance paid in the first year. After 4 or 5 years they can make about 70. All that with a Pension.
And I can't hire anyone. They either fail a drug test, can't pass a background check or don't want the job after they see the work.
I manage an open pit Limestone aggregate mine in the Philadelphia Suburbs. We're automated to an extent but in no way could we automate our haul trucks. The mine is just not laid out for it. These trucks get used used in huge open pit mines out West; they're hundreds of acres with miles of roads. Appalachian coal mines are similar to my pit; smaller scale and older pits.
I employ 35 Union workers and 20 Non-Union. It's one of the few places left where a kid can graduate High School with no real skills, work for us and with a good amount of overtime and hard work can make $60,000/yr with their health insurance paid in the first year. After 4 or 5 years they can make about 70. All that with a Pension.
And I can't hire anyone. They either fail a drug test, can't pass a background check or don't want the job after they see the work.
Darryl M R
Member
How many book shop owners and radio shack managers dug their heel in when Amazon started dominating their space?
The whole idea that the Republicans
Who, if you're being charitable, dislike large government and are pro-business
Who, if you're not being charitable, would deregulate their own dying Mama's hospital if it meant more lobbyist money
Would be able to bring automated/outsourced jobs back in this super globalist economy... an act that would in no uncertain terms, require hella government programs/regulation
It's a bit like asking a fish to keep your electronics dry, isn't it?
Who, if you're being charitable, dislike large government and are pro-business
Who, if you're not being charitable, would deregulate their own dying Mama's hospital if it meant more lobbyist money
Would be able to bring automated/outsourced jobs back in this super globalist economy... an act that would in no uncertain terms, require hella government programs/regulation
It's a bit like asking a fish to keep your electronics dry, isn't it?
GifGafIsTheBestGaf
Member
just like the people that elected him
I agree with some of the programs, especially UBI. I am a true blue hooker for that program and grasp the emancipatory value that has in a very strong sense. Not to be hyperbolic, but I consider it to perhaps be the most important social program we can attempt to do this century. I bemoan often that America missed the ball by letting such a program die off during Nixon and take Reagan's views that if it's for the public it is Socialism, and thus automatically cancerous and fraudulent to support.
But far too many people actually believe jobs are the objective goal of the human species, so much so that the Protestant work ethic of "if you don't work (in this case, to a "canonical" means of ascribed work) you don't deserve to eat." This idea is very dangerously human, for it almost entirely ignores the reality of technological supersedence, and when acknowledged, it's almost always deflected as the future being one of technological extensionality.
In order for it to be an extensionality, the jobs must be paying the same and more or less be 1:1 in replacement. Both of these sound ideal and not realistic whatsoever, and we don't even have to get into the fact that America has an almost crippled degree of social mobility or even the rise of the gig economy as a sign of crumbling frameworks. If you lose your job, in certain contexts, you lose your life. There is something so wrong in this I always laugh when I think about it. It is so obvious this thinking is predicated on violence and ignore-ance.
The future is a battle of ideas, and I deeply worry that many norms, ascriptions, and assumptions we make will be the anchor to sunk us as a collective. Consider how the largest argument against a basic income is an argument of incentivizing laziness; this is something Hillary Clinton parroted last year. 30 years of pilots have shown this to be a negligible amount, for those who often pull out of labor are people caring for families or wanting to stay in school. But apparently, the imposition of jobs means these humane acts are somehow inhumane to do. Then there's the narrative that compliments neoliberalism, that people at the bottom are lessers and deserve their less than status, which compounds with the justification of laziness, because this is how we justify our system as noble: all failures are personal, not systemic.
I don't believe most people get this deeply. They fall for job restoration campaigns promising a world from 1987, and fail to tell people what the world is like in 2017. Most importantly, we fail to offer people an imagination of what "could" be based on reason and compassion. Instead, we get pure idiots like Steve Mnuchin who said a week ago that this isn't even an issue, and won't be until the 2100s. And uneducated masses believe him.
Automation is the future.
Along with universal income. Unless we want stupid levels of unemployment, which we won't.
Conservatism and it's ilk won't survive the future as advancements continue to develop, so they'll try and hold us back as long as possible.
When you tell people that make sure your walking stick is raised in the air.
I admire your optimism when it comes to UBI and wish it was true.
BackLogJoe
Member
I can't believe Democrats (I'd say Republicans, too, but they don't give a fuck about blue collar people) didn't foresee the inevitable and make programs to transfer these people it different lines of blue collar employment. If they'd done that, Hillary would be President right now.
Agreed and the amount of people that will suffer and die from a way thinking that belongs last century is going to be exceedingly high.
I'm ultimately optimistic, but I know it would be a long LONG hard road before we ever got there.
It is likely inevitable, for societies that want to sustain themselves.
A deeper question that should be precisely about America is the following: how much violence and suffering will it normalize and justify before we collectively realize the shift is needed? We're a culture that seems quite fine with education being a stopgap for people economically, and health care being a commodity that the worthy get, though the public is finally swaying on this, including rural American conservatives.
I have pessimism in the same way Laurence Krauss does on this issue.
Confidence Man
Member
build a wall to keep the robots out.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
It was somewhat surprising to me just how few coal mining jobs exist. Learning that there were fewer than 50,000 left in the nation really got me puzzled why it was made such a hot topic in the election. It's clear an industry that is one it's way out and has been for a long time, but I guess people not wanting to deal with reality has been a theme of Trump's success.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
It's really funny that there is more jobs in renewables right now than coal too.
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