Jobs in the coal industry are not coming back

[SHRED]

The pResident was not being honest with those living in coal country when he campaigned there and said he would do just that.

Yale professor Kenneth Gillingham lays out some of the reasons why in this interview.

Here's a snippet:

KIM BROWN: So President Trump has talked about bringing jobs back to the coal industry. Is that even possible, given the cost of coal versus the lower costs of solar power and natural gas these days?

KENNETH GILLINGHAM: It's incredibly unlikely. There's really not much he can do against very, very strong market forces. Natural gas is incredibly inexpensive and the cost of renewables has been dropping incredibly rapidly. Which basically means that when a utility is thinking about what power to build, if you're building a new power plant, you're not going to be looking to coal. It just doesn't make sense, the pure economics. One thing to know is that most coal power plants are actually quite old. And when you're looking to retire a plant, are you going to retrofit it and replace it or are you going to put in something more economic? Generally, you put in the more economic thing and more economic choice. So it's pretty hard to imagine a case where the trends that we're already seeing away from coal are going to stop.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=18210

[Auggie]

1. It's time for coal workers to re-imagine themselves

I'm all for federal dollars that go towards training, education and mental health in their transition. They have to give it up. We have more advanced, safer and healthier technologies on the horizon.

[NickB79]

3. They either can't, or won't

Coal country has already had a multi-decade brain drain, with those intelligent or resourceful enough already leaving or gone. What's left, by and large, is a core that is so brainwashed, paranoid and averse to education that they are wholly unsuited to most 21st century jobs that pay well.

They've also largely voted in right-to-work laws that gutted unions, the one way left they could improve wages at the non-coal jobs in the area.

[Auggie]

4. So what are their options then?

[NickB79]

5. No idea. We're let this cancer fester so long

I'm not sure there IS a viable solution anymore.

[Auggie]

6. Well .... people are capable of amazing things when they're pushed

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. Another reason is that coal companies don't need that many miners anymore

Current technology allows them to simply saw off the top half of a mountain to get the coal.