The Future of Coal Country(newyorker.com) |
The Future of Coal Country(newyorker.com) |
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 mining town in Someplace, Appalachia after the coal is gone than to stay in a silver mining town in Someplace, Colorado after the silver is gone.
I saw similar grievances from dying logging towns when I was growing up in the Pacific Northwest. The flashpoint was government action to protect the remnants of old growth forest that the endangered Spotted Owl lived in. The underlying problem was that loggers were exploiting old growth forest faster than it could regenerate. Deregulation wasn't going to make their way of life sustainable. You can't extract what isn't there any more.
If the residents of these coal-centered towns can find a way to reinvent the local economy to not depend on declining mines, that's great. I wish them luck with that. But most probably won't. We need to prepare to help people transition to other regions and other opportunities when the mines are no longer making money and the towns around them no longer prosper.
I am normally a big fan of welfare and similar social services, but especially when they empower recipients to get back on their feet. There are plenty of communities in appalachia with sky-high unemployment and a huge percentage of their residents essentially draw SSI for most of their lives. They need to move, because they and their children will just draw welfare in perpetuity at the expense of everyone else.
Of course, there aren't a whole lot of ethical ways to get them to move. Forcing them to move is obviously a terrible idea. Making welfare/SSI contingent on moving could work, but will be absolutely terrible for those with all their wealth tied up in their house. It's a hard problem to solve, especially since a lot of these people are okay with / used to just making enough to get by.
Most of these people probably need to move if they've still working age. Maybe one way to reduce friction would be to have government buy out homes in economically distressed areas at the old valuation. Sure, that's "not fair" to people who faced similar dilemmas in the past and didn't get that sort of help. But I'd prefer that the government be inconsistently helpful over consistently unhelpful.
If there are more people in a city than it provides opportunity for it seems to me to be a similar cruelty to incentivize them to stay in one place because they have "roots" there or something equally vague.
Offering people a chunk of money works quite well. If they're likely to be on welfare anyway why not offer them a few years' worth up front, to reflect the costs of their dislocation?
American society is very accounting-driven and wants everything itemized and explained, which seems awfully wasteful to me. It would be more efficient (for the state) and more dignified (for the recipient) to just offer to buy them out for (say) $25,000.
The people who live there now must be around 70 on average. At some point that town is just going to die and become unincorporated county land.
Then tear them down.
It seems that in the post-war era we settled on this notion that families should largely remain rooted and stable, and that became part of the modern "American Dream". I wonder if all of that is just a long-term backlash against the forced migrations of the Great Depression, made possible by the economic golden age we were going through at the time.
For my part I'm putting off buying a house precisely because it'll decrease my mobility.
So I think there is something to this. Moving around probably got much harder due to rising real estate prices.
Now that copper prices have risen, in recent years (not sure about at the moment), there's been intermittent talk of starting some of the UP mining back up.
Probably won't happen -- my guess. Too much investment, given current global volatility. And the relevant people are largely gone.
More recently, foreign paper products production has been inflicting a further hit. The local town near where I stay lost its paper mill (for paperboard products) a few years ago. As one example.
It's not a natural resource, but if an industry moves then it, too, leaves people behind. And when it's a ghost city not a ghost town, it can take a long time to realize the money is gone, and it can leave a lot of people in the lurch.
You don't just reinvent the economy and deal with the baggage of your past (due to ancestors and norms of the time but have effects today) overnight. I mean, what can they do? They won't fall into the lap of becoming a port town with extreme growth due to the proliferation of global trade.
If you believe in extinction-level global climate change, then another possibility is raised: use the mines as the starting point of new Civil Defense shelters. Except instead of built against nuclear fallout, they are for housing the tens of millions we hope survive and make it to them when our species' inaction enables extreme consequences of catastrophic weather changes. This puts the entire local economies back to work at underground construction, renewing and reinforcing the mines to much higher civil engineering standards, and building them out with dormitories, underground farms, cisterns, etc., for long-term stays. These would be multi-decade projects, and gives us a chance to offer the jobs with strings attached to gradually move out all but a skeleton crew as the build-outs gradually taper off. At best, a massive infrastructure project to re-establish our Civil Defense, that we re-purpose in a few decades as underground business parks and cheap residences. At worst, we actually need to use them if climate change causes mass crop failures or the like.
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/22/striking-paydirt-innovative-n...
Students need to learn basic things, but that includes what is diversification, adaptation, how to learn, how to self-learn, and continuously integrate.
Because they don't learn this, there's a coal worker that only understands that task, and thinks it's tragic and someone's fault when it goes away. "I can't do anything else. Coal is all I know." And then they lobby and vote to protect specific job tasks, rather than some sense of a right to earn a living by contributing to society. Nope - it's all about 'the job'.
Imagine if more specialized jobs were suddenly easily automated, like say accounting. Uh ok that's a lot of people displaced from a job, 1.3 million in accounting an auditing. If even 25% were obsolete that's more than all of coal.
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?
http://www.idlewords.com/2010/07/mission_burfjord.htm
Search for "The social center of Burfjord" and read that paragraph and the next. Something like this might be necessary if the US government wants to keep Appalachia populated; I genuinely don't know if I'd support that goal or be indifferent to it.
The discussions I observed happen in a way that I can hardly describe otherwise than that coal is some kind of replacement religion for those areas. For a long time (and for some even today) talking about anything beyond coal was considered some form of heresy. By now denial gets increasingly hard, because except one minor expansion all plans for further mines have been cancelled.
Not that the oil fund is perfect. Using it can drive the currency haywire.
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?
Kind of like how wheat is not quite as sexy as javascript frameworks. However, the midwest has the unique geological feature of being the "Saudi Arabia" of wheat production, so despite wheat not being as sexy as SV startups, we are one of the best places on the planet to grow it so you'd think we'd grow a heck of a lot of wheat compared to, say, Ecuador or Hawaii.
Imagine as a thought experiment that javascript frameworks were not cool and not the future, yet, SV remained the best spot on the entire planet to grow new javascript frameworks. If something (politics? regulation of programmers?) prevented SV from actually being the world capital of javascript frameworks, it would be a valid question to ask why and then fix it.
USA is a big country. We do all kinds of stuff, not just SV stuff. Also obviously 99.99% of the countries population isn't going to sit down and quietly die because they can't participate in SV tech scene, luckily they have plenty of economic activities to perform.
But Trump isn't just saying that the US should remain #1 in a shrinking industry. He claims that he can get coal employment back to where it was decades ago. That's crazy.
Your corn example isn't a good story also, because without subsidies the "Saudi Arabia" of wheat production wouldn't exist.
How about concentrating on stuff which actually generates money?
Steel is needed to rebuild existing infrastructure (roads, bridges, railroads) that have been falling apart over the years.
Steel is also needed to new infrastructure (buildings, electrical grid, solar panels (including those which will line the Mexican border wall), walls, housing, equipment, manufacturing).
Coal power is also inexpensive, transportable (power generation can be localized), & cleaner than ever. There's also a lot of coal left to be mined (> 260 bn short tons; 200 years).
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Energy.html
Coal can also be converted to diesel allowing states to create their own energy & reducing our need for foreign fuel sources. This will have geopolitical ramifications. Even if we decide to move toward renewable resources, having this coal stockpile in our back pocket will give leverage in acquiring the rare earth minerals needed for batteries & solar cells.
Also note that China & India burn a lot of coal, even though they could leap frog to a new energy infrastructure, giving more evidence that there must be compelling reasons to do so.
"I murdered fewer people last year!" would be a terrible defense for Jack The Ripper.
It's going backwards because we need to be at the cutting edge, which is renewables. Trump is facing the past, when the US was great partly because of coal, rather than looking to where things are going in the future.
>Coal power is also inexpensive
But natural gas is even cheaper, and wind and solar are becoming so.
>cleaner than ever
But it is still much less clean than renewables, or even natural gas.
>Coal can also be converted to diesel allowing states to create their own energy & reducing our need for foreign fuel sources.
That's expensive, diesel pollutes, and besides fracking is already replacing foreign oil.
>Even if we decide to move toward renewable resources, having this coal stockpile in our back pocket will give leverage in acquiring the rare earth minerals needed for batteries & solar cells.
I assume you mean getting rare earth minerals from China, but that wouldn't work because China already has all the coal it needs, and besides is moving fast to get off of coal and onto renewables.
China and India burn a lot of coal... because they have a lot of inhabitants. But they have also got much more renewables than the US.
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.
Ok, less dirty. Happy?
> "I murdered fewer people last year!" would be a terrible defense for Jack The Ripper.
By that logic, solar & wind are not clean either. You still have to mine for & process rare earth minerals for solar cells & batteries. Not to mention the poor Chinese workers who process the electronics in poor working conditions. How about the extra infrastructure needed to support solar cells & wind turbines everywhere, as you have power loss with power transmission over a distance.
Neither is fission clean. Perhaps Thorium is relatively clean?
> China and India burn a lot of coal... because they have a lot of inhabitants. But they have also got much more renewables than the US.
China & India are also building infrastructure, which uses steel. I don't think there's any qualms about using renewables in the US. It's a matter of letting the technology mature in the free market & reducing the Federal Budget & lowering taxes. When renewables are more mature, the US will adopt them more.
Note that there are several alternative technologies being developed. Thorium, Biogas, Fusion, etc. When these technologies mature, we can use them all in combination; taking "the right tool for the right job" approach.
Or maybe you're right and it's a longer term trend:
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/02/american-mobility-has...
Looks like a good topic for a book for anyone who has the time. I'm sure it's a confluence of several factors. :)
http://geo.msu.edu/extra/geogmich/rr-logging.html
Land purchased for the timber would be a prime candidate for disposal once it was cleared.
Unlike you, (and I don't mean this in a negative way, it's a complicated discussion) I actually did the opposite and committed myself to the city I currently reside in, less there are 0 economic opportunities to be had, and I volunteer and participate in my community and get to know people. It's easier to build strong communities when you at least know the other people in your condo building.
I agree that moving around makes developing strong ties tough. Once I get further along I'll reconsider taking my foot off the gas a little. My standard is essentially: "If I was trying to convince my kid to go into engineering, would I use my job as an example to aspire towards?" Right now, while I'm grateful for my job and the work certainly isn't bad, the answer is no.
States like disability because it is 100% federally funded and determinations are made by administrative law judges based on local standards. Temporary assistance (aka welfare), Medicaid, and other programs have a administrative and program cost sharing with the state and/or county.
Urban poverty has a lot of disability cases too. Welfare phases out in a few years and chronically poor folks end up labeled disabled.
I call it insidious because once you're on disability, there is an incentive to not try to re-enter the workforce. Most welfare recipients are off the rolls pretty quickly.
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 that the welfare system should prioritize setting its recipients up for success.
This equation isn't typically true for urban areas, so there's no reason for people to move. (See Detroit for details on exceptions.)
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://www.sfexaminer.com/mayor-lee-spend-44-million-sf-teac...
A basic house is $65k in Morgantown: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Morgantown-WV/22898744...
And a nice house with a 10 minute funicular commute to Downtown Pittsburgh (the Paris of Appalachia) isn't too much more: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/11363350_zpid/globalre...
And one can pay much less if one wishes: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2040-Lowrie-St-Pittsburgh...
Scarcity-driven housing costs are one of the biggest problems in a few coastal cities— but in much of the country, the problem is poverty.
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.
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 annoying to hear repeated again and again.
If the residents refuse that sort of help and instead demand that the government somehow make the old mines profitable again, then one may indulge in some exasperated eyeball-rolling and mockery, but I'm trying not to do that preemptively.
https://thinkprogress.org/appalachia-used-to-be-a-democratic...
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.
This isn't a case of both sides do it at all.
This economic transition will eventually effect everyone. Everyone. These people are just at the front end of it.
Both Pittsburgh and Morgantown are pretty prosperous, yet remain affordable enough for blue-collar workers to own homes close enough to the center of the city to commute by foot, bus, streetcar, funicular, PRT pod, or bike. The neighborhoods I posted are a bit rundown, but perfectly livable— I'd live in any of them.
The schools aren't necessarily great in the Pittsburgh neighborhoods but they usually aren't in rural Appalachia either.
I don't disagree that moving is hard when one is poor and one relies on one's social connections for a lot of support. It's just not because of a lack of houses in the prosperous parts of Appalachia.
Housing shortages on the coasts are a huge issue, and a huge issue for national inequality— but overbuilding and inner-city abandonment remain a bigger issue in a lot of cities in the middle of the country.
Also, if you compare the rate of job displacement right now with technology compared to say the early 20th century where a majority of the jobs that existed 50 years prior were "destroyed", then it doesn't seem like we're at much of an inflection point.
More likely, because we have development policies that make it hard/expensive to move, we're not putting people in the new jobs like we used to--this has down the line effects of slowing growth because the workers who are also consumers aren't spending what they could have.
Say that in another thirty years, though. You're referring to billions of people in countries that haven't yet entered a post-industrial economic situation. Are those billions any safer than the millions in the U.S. who've fallen out of it?
"Shame" is defined as "a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior." Teaching people to feel shame for conduct like lying, cheating, and stealing is an important tool societies use to enforce social norms in situations (such as with young people), where resort to legal action would be excessive and harmful.
It works at a macro level too. Consider this article: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-25947984 ("Child Labor: India's Hidden Shame"). The word succinctly captures the international community's disapproval of certain practices that are common in certain places, with the implication that continuation of those practices will meet with continued disapproval from international peers. Again, that's an important social tool at the international level.
It'd be similarly ignorant to praise murdering your enemies. Sure no doubt about it, it's really effective. Doesn't mean it's legal or ethical.
These things are brute force hammers. If you really think shaming has value, read the Scarlet Letter.
For people on the low end of the earning spectrum, the lack of tangible benefits for moving outside of a vague promise of better job prospects makes staying put a viable option. If you worked at McDonalds, would you move across the country and away from your entire social support system for a chance to commute two hours on public transit to work at Arbys? I wouldn't.
> "entire social support" systems, which I might add seem to be coming up short in the first place.
I doubt very much you'd make the same statement about the urban poor.
Good on you, mate. I've had similar experiences myself.
> Why are they only worth helping if they live in cities?
Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's reading a bit much into what I'd said. I don't think I said anything that could even remotely merit such an interpretation.
There is, of course, a spatial proximity of learning centers to population centers but that is just a byproduct of practicality.
> I doubt very much you'd make the same statement [about social support systems coming up short] about the urban poor.
Is there some reason you think I wouldn't make similar assertions about the urban poor? If people live in systemic poverty, then their social support networks have largely failed them. I would argue such a point remains true regardless of a person's origin.
I think perhaps you've misread tone. I was born and raised in a rural resource community, one of the most remote in the U.S. I'm not anti-rural, by any measure.
That said, some skills are best taught in a hands-on fashion. Add to that such learning approaches are more easily adapted to by some than others.
And we all live in a "reptilian brain context". I'm not sure what other context there is. It makes no sense to reason about society as if we weren't all half a chromosome away from a chimpanzee.
Find an on par opponent and you'll get escalation of shaming, get your ass handed back to you with wit, or the person will just ignore you.
So I refuse that it's effective. It's perhaps been effective for you, self selective bias. You probably don't shame people you've sized up who won't respond to shaming the way you want.
But yeah, I totally only believe this because I'm a successful bully (◔_◔)
Rural telephone service and electricity both required subsidization by those who've opted to lead more practical lives i.e. lives where phone and electricity and other various utilities don't have to be directly subsidized by others.
Is it fair to force people who make reasoned and informed decisions about their own lives and where they live to pay for the decisions of those who prefer the country life?
I'm not advocating forcing people to move, under any circumstances.