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The Future of Coal Country

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Re: The Future of Coal Country

#41

Post by vkou »

mandevil wrote: post #31
digi_owl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Norway was basically warned about the problem by an Iraqi that had experienced it once before. Not that the oil fund is perfect. Using it can drive the currency haywire.

The problem is that extractive industries drive Dutch Disease. A Sovereign Wealth Fund can fight it, but Dutch Disease will have an effect. (The other thing that can be done is to have the entire country save more, by running a budget surplus and encouraging individuals to save more as well. This is... somewhat hard to do, in practice, without incredibly strong social cohesion.)

It's a lot easier to do when important sectors of your economy aren't addicted to consumer credit. People don't buy tankers full of oil on credit cards, but they do buy Fords.

Re: The Future of Coal Country

#42

Post by [deleted] »

philipkglass wrote: post #2

Shutting the mine could eliminate more than seven thousand jobs, in a county of thirty-seven thousand people. “Greene County will become a ghost town,” the neighbor wrote. Isn't that the normal fate of towns built around resource extraction after the resource is economically exhausted? The American West is littered with ghost town remnants around depleted mines. It doesn't make much more sense to stay in a coal minin…

[deleted]

Re: The Future of Coal Country

#43

Post by francisofascii »

philipkglass wrote: post #2

Shutting the mine could eliminate more than seven thousand jobs, in a county of thirty-seven thousand people. “Greene County will become a ghost town,” the neighbor wrote. Isn't that the normal fate of towns built around resource extraction after the resource is economically exhausted? The American West is littered with ghost town remnants around depleted mines. It doesn't make much more sense to stay in a coal minin…

Right. For people in Greene county, the obvious answer is transitioning to Pittsburgh, which is only 60 miles away, doing decent economically and still affordable.

Re: The Future of Coal Country

#44

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

philipkglass wrote: post #24
hiram112 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. I know folks on the right screamed about the 'welfare queens' living on the tax payers' dime in the inner cities for generation after generation. In reality, this was a coded attack against blacks, and the majority of the claims were hyperbole. But now the left has begun making the same mean-spirited attacks on uneducated whites from Appalachia, the Midwest, and the south. Both types of stereotypes are an…

I agree that people should remain compassionate. I understand why some people experience schadenfreude when it's rural Republican voters failing to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" after hearing that advice given to urban Democratic voters, but tit-for-tat shaming is not humane. These people largely don't vote how I vote but they are still my fellow citizens. They have dependent children and elders. Some degr…

I have no sympathy for people that vote against their own interests.

If you're living off of government assistance and vote Republican while Republicans are constantly talking about stripping away said assistance programs, you absolutely deserve whatever happens to you. I have zero sympathy for you. You made your bed, now you get to sleep in it.

The only people I will have sympathy for are the children who have parents that are too dumb to see through the bullshit spewed by Fox, InfoWars, Breitbart, etc, and people that vote Democrat because they know better, but end up getting screwed by the Republicans that don't.

Re: The Future of Coal Country

#45

Post by woodandsteel »

Trump says he is going to bring back coal as a part of his program to make America great again.

But the reason America was so great is that it was at the leading edge of technological change. That is relevant because in the 19th century, coal was the hot new technology. It was used for powering factory machines, electric generators, railroads and steam boats, heating, and producing steel.

But technology continued to advance, and coal has gradually been replaced. It survives today only for steel production and part of electric generation, and even there it is being replaced by gas and renewables.

So when Trump wants to revive coal, he is going backwards technologically, and that would mean losing out in the global economy, too.

Any Trump defenders want to disagree?

Re: The Future of Coal Country

#46

Post by ThrustVectoring »

vkou wrote: post #41
mandevil wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that extractive industries drive Dutch Disease. A Sovereign Wealth Fund can fight it, but Dutch Disease will have an effect. (The other thing that can be done is to have the entire country save more, by running a budget surplus and encouraging individuals to save more as well. This is... somewhat hard to do, in practice, without incredibly strong social cohesion.)

It's a lot easier to do when important sectors of your economy aren't addicted to consumer credit. People don't buy tankers full of oil on credit cards, but they do buy Fords.

Blaming debtors for indebtedness is like blaming heroin addicts for drug-running. It's a two-sided market, and savings gluts can and will drive down the price of credit until the market clears.

Re: The Future of Coal Country

#47

Post by thwarted »

rfrank wrote: post #14
opportune wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference is that there are at least jobs in cities. They may not all be >$50k solid middle class jobs, but they are there. There are actually almost no jobs in these areas. I would even agree with urban relocation if one city had a disproportionate number of people trapped in inter-generational poverty and another had extra jobs. I don't think "deep cuts" to urban welfare are ever the solution. I do think…

> The main difference is that there are at least jobs in cities. There just aren't any houses, so their quality of life takes a greater hit than staying put in the form of huge commutes and dramatically increased cost of living. See service workers or teachers in San Francisco. 1. https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/20/15834514/rent-transportatio... 2. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607957/the-unaffordable-u... 3. http…

While true, this is largely beside the point, and is addressable because it's mostly caused by politics. We don't need to have yet another discussion about Bay Area building constraints.

Additionally, there are other cities that have more opportunity than closed mining towns do. At the bare minimum the people need to relocate to someplace marginally better with ANY economic opportunity, because where they're at now has NO opportunity, not necessarily some place that is the top of economic opportunity.

Re: The Future of Coal Country

#48

Post by tropo »

maxxxxx wrote: post #25
phil248 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditionally in this country, people readily migrated for job opportunities. Maybe that's just a fairy tale, though it happened more than once in my family and with plenty of people I know. Perhaps people in resource extraction and one-factory towns no longer want to migrate for opportunity. Or maybe that's never been a majority inclination to begin with.

When I grew up in Germany there was this stereotype that Americans move around a lot for jobs. Industry leaders often put this up as an example for Germans who at that time didn't want to move that much. So I think there is something to this. Moving around probably got much harder due to rising real estate prices.

Moving is harder because property taxes will suddenly reset to much higher values. Long-term owners are partly protected from tax increases.

We also have high transaction costs for homes. Considering both sides of the transaction, something like 10% of the home's value is eaten up by various fees.

So nobody can afford to move. BTW, this is a huge source of our traffic problems, the other being school districts.

Re: The Future of Coal Country

#49

Post by prawn »

philipkglass wrote: post #2

Shutting the mine could eliminate more than seven thousand jobs, in a county of thirty-seven thousand people. “Greene County will become a ghost town,” the neighbor wrote. Isn't that the normal fate of towns built around resource extraction after the resource is economically exhausted? The American West is littered with ghost town remnants around depleted mines. It doesn't make much more sense to stay in a coal minin…

How much would these people lose out? Let's say they bought property there during a boom, and now face having to give it up at a huge discount (if they're even able to sell), before buying in a more expensive regional centre or big city.

With time, the situation only gets worse - their property price is driven down as the demand drops, they can't justify renovating, house falls into disrepair, etc.

If the settlements are disparate, rail links would be too expensive, and are there enough remote jobs that people in these situations could be trained for?

Re: The Future of Coal Country

#50

Post by prawn »

woodandsteel wrote: post #45

Trump says he is going to bring back coal as a part of his program to make America great again. But the reason America was so great is that it was at the leading edge of technological change. That is relevant because in the 19th century, coal was the hot new technology. It was used for powering factory machines, electric generators, railroads and steam boats, heating, and producing steel. But technology continued to…

I feel like we're in a similar position in Australia. Ruling party is over-reliant on coal when we are in a great position to go in harder on renewables, especially solar. Our solar-pickup is amazing, you see panels on so many houses, and we have loads of space and sunlight.
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