The fantasy that coal mining jobs with wages that allow high school dropouts to support a single-income family living a middle class existence are coming back en masse to back country West Virginia is just that.
That's probably a pretty decent scenario. Add a few drug addictions and a police record for drugs, and it gets significantly worse. Add a long term medical ailment. Add the inability to get any credit. Add some relatively massive debt. I don't want this to sound like it does, but I don't think you understand the reality of the situation that affects the vast majority of US land mass.
Nobody said anything about coal, except Trump. Coal is economically dead, even the coal miner's know that. It's that since coal is gone, there is nothing else to turn to. It's all the other jobs and factories that have long since gone.
The GOP convinced people that removing regulations and cutting taxes will make US companies more "competitive," globally. I assume that was interpreted as bringing back jobs.
Of course that won't compete with countries willing to pollute their land, sea and air for a buck, has no worker protections, and/or heavily subsidizes it's industry.
Both parties are for open trade, which has the downside of extremely cheap labor for US companies at the expense of domestic labor. US companies send materials to foreign countries, where they are assembled for nearly nothing, under bad conditions, and don't have to worry about industrial waste. The assembled product is then shipped it back to the US, or to it's ultimate desination.
Also, something that isn't talked about much anymore is what was called the "Walmartization" of America. Before Walmart, small towns were fairly autonomous. They had their locally or regionally owned hardware stores, clothing stores, grocery stores, banks, etc. Whenever a Walmart was built (and this applies to most conglomerate companies like banks and farming), it leveraged it's logistics might and shut everyone else out of business. Local politicians didn't do anything about it, probably because they were corrupt, incompetent, powerless or all three. State and federal politicians didn't do anything about it either. Coupled with globalization, these once healthy towns shriveled to nothing. Your options mostly became limited to working at Walmart, working at a fast food joint, or be a public servant.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/15/opinion/the-wal-martizatio...
All this affected the vast majority of land mass in the entire US. Think about that. What other country sits by and lets that happen?
If you can logically analyze (meaning take emotion out of it) the related issues Trump was campaigning on, it was to renegotiate trade deals to improve the US job market and prevent illegal immigration to improve the US job market. Of course both of these were politicized by the establishment (who both love free trade). And of course he didn't do himself any favors, but I think that was the main draw in middle America. Having a honest job with honest pay is so important to a lot of people (for obvious reasons), that everything else that comes with Trump is secondary or ignorable. It's been bad for middle America for decades, starting in the 70s and has gotten worse (and ignored by the parties). Trump is the result of 50 years of not merely frustration but absolute despiration. Remember, not only did he beat the Democratic candidate, he handily beat all of the 20 or so establishment GOP candidates. I think if any other candidate campaigned on the same jobs platform as Trump (regardless of party), Trump would never have gotten elected. Trump is a symptom of the above economic problem, and people offering the same solutions will be elected again.
Here's the Gore/Perot debate on NAFTA in 1992. I'm not convinced open trade isn't just another form of corporate giveaway at the expense of domestic workers.
But why? People do seem to want this, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why. I was unemployed one summer and got about $400 every other week from the state. It wasn’t a lot of money, but factoring in transportation costs it was a better deal than going out and getting a low paying job. It was literally the best summer of my life since I was a kid.
If I was working a $12/hr factory job or mining or some other labor type job and someone came along and said they’d pay me the same to stay home, I’d take that deal before they could finish the sentence.
I’ve worked a factory job and I’ve worked outdoors. While I enjoyed the work, I enjoyed not working 1000 times more.
I don’t particularly like working in an office either, but since I can generally set my own hours and the pay is good, it’s not so bad. Punching a clock is hell; why anyone would prefer that over unemployment, welfare or UBI is beyond me.
The first one is easy - enough to pay the bills and live a decent life, including the ability to raise a family while having basic needs and some occasional extravagances met.
The second one depends on time, location and circumstance and changes from time, location and circumstance depending on which of the millions of people you are comparing. It's more of a macroeconomic / socioeconomic / philosophic question rather than a microeconomic one. The best I can answer is sometimes they would be the same, some times group A would take less than group B, sometimes group B would take less than group A. I would guess given the same location and cost of living, they would be similar.