The average coal miner salary is ~$22/hr, or ~$42k/year. 174,000 coal workers in the US @ $31,668k/year (the max SS benefit permitted) = $5.5 billion/year. This is not expensive, nor in perpetuity, only the years from now until they would've hit their full retirement age regardless, not to mention the cost savings from drug addiction and other social negatives currently occurring from the industry collapsing (please, please, please take the 2 minutes to read this footnote) [1].
People should not be harmed by our transition to renewables, and it is laughable that we can't afford to take care of those no longer employed within the economy.
This is not unprecedented. The shipping industry used redundancy payments to transition longshoremen out of the workforce when containerization exploded, funded by profits from the efficiency gains of containerization. I'm simply arguing for the formalization of the process, and administration through the Social Security Administration (one of the most efficient orgs in the US government).
To be clear: I am essentially advocating a bridge basic income for these workers. Not subsidies, not incentives. You quit your job at the coal mine or coal generator today, and you're retired from the coal industry.
EDIT: @derekdahmer & @ArkyBeagle: I'm not requiring someone to retire if they don't want to. I'm simply ensuring they don't fall into poverty. What more can be done when your job is destroying the environment? Allow it to continue? That is unacceptable. I'm not proposing welfare, I'm proposing financial freedom to explore other options to find purpose and self actualize.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/07/us/drug-overdo...
It's about identity. Free money can keep you fed but it can't give you a sense of pride and self worth.
That right there is pretty much the issue. We could take china's approach and specifically limit the use of heavy equipment to X hours per day, requiring everything else to be done by hand. But that's stupid pointless makework, that takes longer and costs more.
With free money, maybe some people learn a trade, start a band, write a book. Send people to school and maybe we get some value back in 5-10 years.
I understand that people want to take a job on the line at the plant, just like dad did. Well, tough. The world isn't like that anymore.
Policies might "encourage" Apple to do it's manufacturing in the U.S. A U.S. iphone factory would employ about 15 people. the security team that keeps people away from the machines.
The way to stop feeling useless is to stop being useless. Don't want money to help figure out what you can do? Well, ok, best of luck.
edit
This may come off as mean, bitter, heartless, uncaring, vile , reprehensible and whatever other adjectives you want to throw in.
Small towns are dying because there's not much reason to be there. We can subsidize them in a bunch of ways, but it's still just welfare.
Rural areas are coping with exploding rates of meth, heroin, and opioid abuse, and a lot of that is directly caused by the absolutely shit quality of life they all have.
You're far from the first liberal to regard rural people with contempt, and that's a big part of why we now have President Trump to contend with.
Maybe it's time to start taking other people's problems a little more seriously.
As an adult, I find it really difficult to care about their problems at all. However, the fact is, unless we do show compassion and take their issues seriously, the current situation will only get worse.
But the writing was on the wall back then. There's like 4 jobs in the country where horseback riding is useful. It's nothing more than an expensive hobby for the well off.
> The obvious rebuttal to this is that those small towns now control the government.
No, not even remotely. A billionaire city slicker controls the government.
> Maybe it's time to start taking other people's problems a little more seriously.
Eh, maybe. I don't think we need to make it so damn hard for people to get ahead, or even have a chance. But, of course, my guy lost. But maybe not. No election coming up, all there is for me to do is figure out how big my tax cut is going to be, and figure out where that goes in the IRA.
No tariff is going to make my home town thrive. There are no jobs there.
I can't help but think of the duke:
Devlin: I don't know what to say. Never begged before. Turned my stomach. I suppose I should have been grateful that you gave me the job.
McLintock: Gave? Boy, you've got it all wrong. I don't give jobs I hire men.
Drago: You intend to give this man a full day's work, don'tcha boy?
Devlin Warren: You mean you're still hirin' me? Well, yes, sir, I certainly deliver a fair day's work.
McLintock: And for that I'll pay you a fair day's wage. You won't give me anything and I won't give you anything. We both hold up our heads.
But when i tell old friends from high school to come where the work is, they just shake their heads.
My friends that are too fucking hard headed to figure out something better than drinking and bellyaching. Go back to school? Learn a new trade? fuck no.
I'll help people learn to be useful, but i'm not interested in paying someone to make saddles. Sure, it's fun. Turns out they're just not good enough at it to earn a living doing it. Do fucking something else, and make saddles as a fucking hobby. Be a goddamn grownup.
As a, as you put it, "liberal that regards rural people with contempt", i think these three things would improve things for lots of people.
1. Pay police well. Like, double it, and hold police to very high standards. 2. Pay teachers well. Like, double it, and hold teachers to very high standards. 3. Tie tax rates for businesses to local economies. The worse the economy, the bigger the break, the smaller the business, the bigger the break.
But again, i'm a contemptuous liberal that just got told i'm full of shit.
So, seriously, what the fuck am i supposed to do? "take problems seriously?" that's a bullshit rhetorical jab that contains zero useful information.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. And they vote for someone who is going to give them a job.
"Tough" doesn't (didn't) cut it.
If someone's job is their identity, and their job harms others, what are some other possible solutions? (Retraining runs into similar issues as you mentioned -- coal miners don't want to become keyboard jockeys, they want their sense of pride and self worth for doing the profession they trained for.)
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/from-coal...
They just want to grandstand about it.
People LOVE welfare as long as you don't call it welfare or give it to someone else. It's those other people that don't deserve it.
and it is laughable that we can't afford to take care of those no longer employed within the economy
e: the salary info wasn't in the comment when I replied.
Social security safety net is better than 0, which is where coal is going to regardless, no matter how much we attempt to prop it up. Can't compete against fuels with zero marginal cost. Every coal company in the US is currently bankrupt.
I am open to better ideas if you have them. My proposal removes coal-fired generation and provides for workers at the same time, affordably.
Your solution doesn't provide for the workers. I'm sure you're sincere, but a handout from the government is not perceived as a substitute for challenging, meaningful, and respectable work. Basic income proposals don't generally seem to consider pride, other than what I see as nebulous handwaving about how one would be free to pursue their dreams. What dreams are there in coal country when there is no coal? I don't see BI alone as helping to sustain or resurrect a community and associated way of life whose primary industry is one you've eliminated.
FWIW, this is how Trump voters are made. And at least in the U.S., the coal industry looks done.
Even if we doubled or tripled coal production, local economies in coal country would still be limping. It’s not like executives/stockholders of coal companies are dumping all their profits back into the local economy.
As a country/world we’d be better off paying former coal workers a living wage indefinitely, no strings attached, for nothing in return but keeping the coal in the ground.
The US already employs more people in the solar industry than the coal industry. We could conceivably make a policy like big federal wage subsidies to renewable companies willing to relocate to West Virginia or wherever.
And the paychecks it generates aren't really enough to justify even just the local impacts to health and the environment.
Same story with the steel industry, auto industry, textile industry, etc., in other parts of the country.
And of course the coal companies are still willing to throw lots of money at lobbying, which buys a lot of influence among local politicians.
You can't discount pride. You can't discount being trained and good at a difficult job, and proud at being the one who does it. Money from the government doesn't replace that in the hierarchy of needs. And job retraining is tough when you're 40+.
> We could conceivably make a policy like big federal wage subsidies to renewable companies willing to relocate to West Virginia or wherever
I wonder if the renewables need the labor? If so, I can see that working. If not, then really the only problem is how to handle political dissatisfaction in the short term, and (perhaps) thus our election today.
I guess from many perspectives that is a lot of jobs, but it isn't that many jobs.
1) Coal was already in decline in the 90s. This isn't a government problem. This is a supply & demand problem. The demand for coal has declined. 2) Automation has drastically reduced the number of miners needed to actually operate a single mine. The # of jobs needed simply will not materialize. 3) Coal is losing the competition to alternative energy sources. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-06/wind-and-s... ) 4) China has been operating at excess production capacity already (http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-coal-plant-binge-deepens-... )
This is a problem of a group of people failing to come to terms with the harsh realities of a capitalistic system. While their local and national leaders (I'm looking at you, McConnell) continually tell them that coal can be 'brought back'. It can't. Many of the same leaders know the truth, but to lie to the people is politically advantageous for them.
Four years from now Appalachian coal towns will be in worse shape, and even more pissed off. They need leaders that actually respect them to tell them the truth.
That said, I don't have any illusion that the future isn't bleak in coal country. My extended family has become substantially poorer over the last two decades -- from middle class to poverty. Still, we're working with what we've got. Every job created changes a life. At the very least it can be a bridge toward more opportunity -- that McConnell funded job was for me.
Our people will probably never become well off, but I still hold out hope that we might be able to get by without deracinating.
The question I think is more important is not whether jobs will be good for Appalachia though (obviously they will do some direct good), it is whether the good that comes out of those jobs is at all in proportion with the harm from expanding our use of coal. It likely is not, the harm will be much greater.