Yes, but coal miners are such a small subset of middle America. I'm talking about all the blood letting between VA and CA. And (I'm not being snarky) but what would you retrain them to do? Unless those cities grow an economy, they will just be retrained, still unemployed people.

Unless you have a massive migration to large cities, it's not going to do much good.

I mean think about that for a few steps. You have millions of people in small towns all over America in ghost towns. Training will help, but until these towns start growing businesses, then what? I mean read about the Walmatization of America. Read about all the factories moving to Mexico after NAFTA. It's all dead.

The Democrats used to serve the middle class, but they stopped after Carter got demolished by Reagan. Bill Clinton pushed that retrain idea, but the blood kept flowing. Why would it be any different now?

Like it or not the default vote for most of middle America is GOP. The Dems have to actually come up with something that works to get these smaller cities and towns vibrant again if they want the votes. I don't think the establishment Dems understand America outside the coastal areas.

The latest plan from Schumer is the same. Would probably do a lot of good for the working poor in cities, but won't do much for middle America. Same ole same ole. Like I said, it's a problem neither party knows how to solve, or doesn't have the political will to solve it.

The problem for democrats isn't their ideas or a lack of talking about jobs and economic growth, the problem is that voters instinctively sense that both parties are fungible in terms of economic outcomes regardless of what they say, so they stop critically thinking about a candidate's policy proposals and become easily swayed by bluster and demagoguery; this is a losing position for democrats because republicans are much better at these tactics and the result is the continued decline of the democratic party.

> The Democrats used to serve the middle class, but they stopped after Carter got demolished by Reagan.

No, the Democrats now serve the middle and upper class, they used to serve the working class.

And the pro-labor faction of the a party was dominant until Bill Clinton (and arguably until 1994; there's a reason why Clinton had to rely on mainly Republican votes to pass NAFTA.)

> Like it or not the default vote for most of middle America is GOP

If your default vote is for your own destruction, you will be destroyed, and then to your vote, default or otherwise, will be irrelevant. The GOP has nothing to offer Middle America but a series of people (blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, ...) to vent their anger at as a distraction while the GOP’s financiers destroy Middle America.

> The Dems have to actually come up with something that works to get these smaller cities and towns vibrant again if they want the votes.

The people can be saved; their small towns and cities, in many cases, cannot. Some might survive as shadows of themselves and living museums (see Columbia, CA, as an example from the Gold Rush), but once the economic basis for a town is gone, finding a new one is unlikely, and doing it for more than a small share of a large number is just not going to happen.

> I don't think the establishment Dems understand America outside the coastal areas.

The neoliberal establishment has been losing ground in the Democratic party for decades; and what they don't connect with has more to do with class than geography.

Then have the migrate to the cities. Seriously, the US was founded by people moving over the Atlantic in search of better opportunities and the west was converted the same way.

That is an awful solution. Housing is already extremely expensive on most coasts. Adding huge amounts of people to that would make it even worse.

There are cities that aren't on the coasts.

50 million people? Simple dismissive answers to complex problems isn't going to solve anything.

Yes the vast majority of the non-urban population is going to become urban for economic reasons. That’s been going on since the dawn of civilization (it's literally where the name “civilization” comes from), and it's not going to reversed any time soon.

So the solution is train 50 million people and tell them to move to large cities? Will the government pay for the move, or no? What about the skyrocketing rents in the large cities with the large influx? What about their homes and land they own now? Write it off? What exactly would you train them to do?

That's got a lot of red flags in the details. Ignoring that, it doesn't sound anywhere near ideal solution. I would expect something better. I think getting the federal government into building things again instead of contracting it out would be a start, similar to FDR's works programs. I'm sure it will get a lot of resistance, but the same way we've been doing things isn't working.

> So the solution is train 50 million people and tell them to move to large cities?

No, that's not a solution or what they need to be told to do, the move is just what is largely going to happen over time.

Insofar as there as a policy solution, it's supporting the effected population through the transition, which, certainly includes funding retraining those who can benefit from that, assisting relocation, and assisting those who can't benefit from retraining.

(While it's politically unlikely in the near term, UBI could address much of that with less friction and overhead than targeted programs.)

> I would expect something better. I think getting the federal government into building things again instead of contracting it out would be a start, similar to FDR's works programs.

Whether it's government jobs or contractor jobs makes no difference; FDRs works programs weren't significant because of that but instead because of the scale of the work. But those were to deal with a major business cycle downturn, not an effort to hold back the long-term rural→urban transition.

Unless your works program is a permanent one building monuments to waste in rural areas, it’s beside the point of the problem you are trying to address

Surely most of them have jobs? Even then, the top 5 cities could each handle a million more people - admitably it would require more infrastructure.

Also there is no rule that big problems can't have simple solutions.

Many of them are on some sort of government assistance with part time or low paying jobs. Also it would be 10 million over 5 cities. That has big problems in and of itself.

>Also there is no rule that big problems can't have simple solutions.

No, but if the solution was simple, it would have been solved already.

As a son and grandson of coal miners. That is just politician speak. My father and grandfather can't be retrained to do something else and make the same amount.

So you don't want a handout and you don't want re-training, then what do you want? For someone to wave a magic wand and make coal economically viable again?

They want honest wage for honest work. Pretty straight forward. The government sure subsidizes industry in California, New England and coastal cities, why not middle America?

As someone who enjoys breathing clean air, they can't continue to mine coal. They just cannot. And I'm sorry they feel that way about their wages, but they have to continue to adapt.

Coal is dead due to the economies of natural gas. Besides, China uses coal like crazy, and we pay China to do so, so as far as the atmosphere goes, the US not using coal doesn't really matter that much.

Chinese coal consumption has been declining since 2013.

They say they are working to reduce consumption, but at the same time, they are building more coal fired plants, which is projected to increase through at least 2020. They are also building plants in other countries.

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/china-india-w...

According to Bloomberg, China’s coal-fired generation capacity may increase by as much as 19 percent over the next five years. While the country has canceled some coal-fired capacity due to lack of demand growth, China still plans to increase its coal-fired power plants to almost 1,100 gigawatts, which is three times the coal-fired capacity of the United States.

While it is true that China is building wind and solar units domestically, many of these units are being curtailed due to lack of infrastructure and a preference for coal.

Edit: The Chinese government indicates they are though, which coincides with your 2013 statistic.

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/03/14/china-coal-consumption-...

Yup, I feel the same about cars and meat. But willing to wait for the generational change.