Start from a deeply deluded place about what the economy is & you are playing a stupid game. & so to the extent that Trump is not stopped and removed from all levers of power immediately, America...
1. Orwell was probably writing about Welsh coal miners. Those mines had thin seams. The work was awful, but there was little else to do. I recall the miners' strike in the early 1970s, with Britain on a 3-day work week and power cuts, until it was solved. Whether it was that strike of the failed one in the early 1980s, but it was said that imported Australian coal could have every piece wrapped in gold foil and still be cheaper. The largest coal mine in the UK is one that extends out under the North Sea, it is far from the likes of a Welsh coal mine. Thankfully, the UK doesn't do open-cast mining. Let us not forget that the Aberfan Disaster in 1966 was due to coal mine tips that collapsed and the "landslide" buried a school and killed the village's children.
Currently, Britain is trying to rescue a Chinese owned blast furnace in Scunthorpe, that was to be closed down, by partial nationalization. [There is a similar issue of viability at the Port Talbot works.]
The irony is that blast furnaces are very old technology. Even in the 1980s, US steel-making was moving to electric arc furnaces because the produce was cheaper. The UK wants to retain steel-making for strategic reasons. It should invest in newer technology powered by renewable energy. Coal mines should be closed. And yes, investing in new businesses to employ the redundant workers should be done.
Australia continues to thumb its nose at climate change. They must be gleeful that US tariffs and reciprocal tariffs will make their coal exports (to China!) all the more competitive. Those "manly" Appalachian mining jobs will disappear in a puff of [coal] smoke. Hopefully, the environmental destruction of Appalachia from decapitating mountains to reach coal beds and waste, polluting streams, will end. But, like the UK's towns dependent on mining, the US would invest in new industries in those areas. Wasn't Biden's IRA doing that?
I think that blast furnaces are still the best way to make steel from iron ore. Electric arcs are better, but require scrap steel as an input. Clean steel from iron ore must wait, according to Wikipedia, for direct electrochemical reduction--which is still in development.
As far as Appalachian coal is concerned, I think that most US coal is now mined out west.
Consider. We have been extracting iron from ore for many centuries, really picking up from the 19th century onwards. Unless we are sequestering iron and steel somehow, the world is accumulating iron and steel products, mostly as scrap. As ores become lower quality, the economic incentive shifts to recycling the scrap (unless it is hopelessly contaminated with impurities). This should increasingly shift the bulk of steel manufacture to recycling, and hence using arc furnaces. For ore, the Swedes are working on using hydrogen to reduce the iron in the ore, no coal/coke required. As the hydrogen can be created using renewable energy and water hydrolysis, the need for low-sulfur coal or coke in a blast furnace to extract iron disappears. IDK what the economics of this are, but at least it eliminates a CO2 source for smelting. So the energy source in both smelting ore and recycling iron and steel is electricity, which is generated by either renewable sources or nuclear. The future of coal as an energy source is dim. As a carbon feedstock, however...
Renewable power can employ a lot of men. We get lots of roof top solar installs and there are usually 5 or so men doing the work over a two day period. If you are doing a large installation in the desert you quickly see that a lot of labor will be used. Wind power also employs a lot of people both in manufacturing and installation. EV car manufacturing can employ people in both battery and auto plants. When you add up all this potential employment that the Trump policies are destroying, it becomes quite apparent why China will be the long term winner.
There is one Big Manly Job that still employs a whole lot of people, but is never quite mentioned in masculinist rhetoric: meatpacking. (If the term "meatpacking" isn't sufficiently manly in the right way, use "slaughterhouse.")
I wonder why the wingnuts never refer to this particular manly job? It was always an awful job, but used to be unionized, and at least paid American citizens pretty well. Or maybe I have answered my question.
Well done! [pun intended] The right wing attracts sadists. The suffering is the point. Well paid slaughterhouse workers are girly. Real men get lousy pay and killed on the job.
Suzanne Collins got this. In her Hunger Games books, hard rock coal mining was punishment. The protagonist's District 12 was the lowest of the low with its deadly, body breaking mines. The rulers had atomic power, so it isn't clear what they used the coal for, but mining it did manage to tear body and soul apart. All the districts were punitive. It was like Dante's Inferno. District 3 handed out night vision binoculars so harvesters could reap wheat with a scythe well past sunset.
Most readers were horrified by the cruelty of the Panem and cheered the rebels. Republicans read this book differently. They see it as a model society destroyed and are hoping for a sequel series in which the rebellion is undone.
Trump's agenda makes sense if you believe that the America's apex was the 1950's. The economy was driven by autos, steel, and coal. It was a time when a husband with a blue collar (often union) job could support a family (tiny house and 1 car), women were homemakers, blacks knew their place, Europe & Japan were rebuilding, China was desperately poor, and the Rust Belt wasn't rusty but river water was toxic and inflammable,. This return to the 50's is the purest expression of Conservatism.
We could note that even the poorest US states have a GDP per capita comparable to France & Canada, and that US GDP per capita growth has far outstripped the rest of the world since Covid. New York's per capita GDP is double Germany's. Which would mean that the rest of the world hasn't been ripping off the US off (maybe the US has been ripping them off?) and to the extent there is a US economic problem, it is distributional.
Maybe we are victims of our own cynicism. The US hasn't celebrated its accomplishments, and in so doing, we shun the investment, innovation, and immigration that made it possible.
But, it's not a silly or even rhetorical question Brad. A speechwriter could easily have told HRC, "I get what you're trying to say but don't say it like that because that one sentence will be tweeted, etc." Dems are great at speeches and debates but lousy at bumper stickers. The "we're not them" or "read my plan" doesn't travel down into the mines or anywhere else. By 2025, I still don't see a compelling bumper sticker. Relying on a recession to win back a House when that win ought to be a slam dunk--because you cannot get the message across-- is not just a canary in a coal mine...it's a freakin' flock of black lunged fowls.
1. Orwell was probably writing about Welsh coal miners. Those mines had thin seams. The work was awful, but there was little else to do. I recall the miners' strike in the early 1970s, with Britain on a 3-day work week and power cuts, until it was solved. Whether it was that strike of the failed one in the early 1980s, but it was said that imported Australian coal could have every piece wrapped in gold foil and still be cheaper. The largest coal mine in the UK is one that extends out under the North Sea, it is far from the likes of a Welsh coal mine. Thankfully, the UK doesn't do open-cast mining. Let us not forget that the Aberfan Disaster in 1966 was due to coal mine tips that collapsed and the "landslide" buried a school and killed the village's children.
Currently, Britain is trying to rescue a Chinese owned blast furnace in Scunthorpe, that was to be closed down, by partial nationalization. [There is a similar issue of viability at the Port Talbot works.]
The irony is that blast furnaces are very old technology. Even in the 1980s, US steel-making was moving to electric arc furnaces because the produce was cheaper. The UK wants to retain steel-making for strategic reasons. It should invest in newer technology powered by renewable energy. Coal mines should be closed. And yes, investing in new businesses to employ the redundant workers should be done.
Australia continues to thumb its nose at climate change. They must be gleeful that US tariffs and reciprocal tariffs will make their coal exports (to China!) all the more competitive. Those "manly" Appalachian mining jobs will disappear in a puff of [coal] smoke. Hopefully, the environmental destruction of Appalachia from decapitating mountains to reach coal beds and waste, polluting streams, will end. But, like the UK's towns dependent on mining, the US would invest in new industries in those areas. Wasn't Biden's IRA doing that?
I think that blast furnaces are still the best way to make steel from iron ore. Electric arcs are better, but require scrap steel as an input. Clean steel from iron ore must wait, according to Wikipedia, for direct electrochemical reduction--which is still in development.
As far as Appalachian coal is concerned, I think that most US coal is now mined out west.
Consider. We have been extracting iron from ore for many centuries, really picking up from the 19th century onwards. Unless we are sequestering iron and steel somehow, the world is accumulating iron and steel products, mostly as scrap. As ores become lower quality, the economic incentive shifts to recycling the scrap (unless it is hopelessly contaminated with impurities). This should increasingly shift the bulk of steel manufacture to recycling, and hence using arc furnaces. For ore, the Swedes are working on using hydrogen to reduce the iron in the ore, no coal/coke required. As the hydrogen can be created using renewable energy and water hydrolysis, the need for low-sulfur coal or coke in a blast furnace to extract iron disappears. IDK what the economics of this are, but at least it eliminates a CO2 source for smelting. So the energy source in both smelting ore and recycling iron and steel is electricity, which is generated by either renewable sources or nuclear. The future of coal as an energy source is dim. As a carbon feedstock, however...
Renewable power can employ a lot of men. We get lots of roof top solar installs and there are usually 5 or so men doing the work over a two day period. If you are doing a large installation in the desert you quickly see that a lot of labor will be used. Wind power also employs a lot of people both in manufacturing and installation. EV car manufacturing can employ people in both battery and auto plants. When you add up all this potential employment that the Trump policies are destroying, it becomes quite apparent why China will be the long term winner.
There is one Big Manly Job that still employs a whole lot of people, but is never quite mentioned in masculinist rhetoric: meatpacking. (If the term "meatpacking" isn't sufficiently manly in the right way, use "slaughterhouse.")
I wonder why the wingnuts never refer to this particular manly job? It was always an awful job, but used to be unionized, and at least paid American citizens pretty well. Or maybe I have answered my question.
Well done! [pun intended] The right wing attracts sadists. The suffering is the point. Well paid slaughterhouse workers are girly. Real men get lousy pay and killed on the job.
2 (tons / hour) * 8 (hours / day) = 16 (tons / day):
"Some people say a man is made out of mud. A poor man's made out of muscle and blood.
Muscle and blood and skin and bones, a mind that's weak and a back that's strong.
...
You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt!
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go -- I owe my soul to the Company store!"
Suzanne Collins got this. In her Hunger Games books, hard rock coal mining was punishment. The protagonist's District 12 was the lowest of the low with its deadly, body breaking mines. The rulers had atomic power, so it isn't clear what they used the coal for, but mining it did manage to tear body and soul apart. All the districts were punitive. It was like Dante's Inferno. District 3 handed out night vision binoculars so harvesters could reap wheat with a scythe well past sunset.
Most readers were horrified by the cruelty of the Panem and cheered the rebels. Republicans read this book differently. They see it as a model society destroyed and are hoping for a sequel series in which the rebellion is undone.
Trump's agenda makes sense if you believe that the America's apex was the 1950's. The economy was driven by autos, steel, and coal. It was a time when a husband with a blue collar (often union) job could support a family (tiny house and 1 car), women were homemakers, blacks knew their place, Europe & Japan were rebuilding, China was desperately poor, and the Rust Belt wasn't rusty but river water was toxic and inflammable,. This return to the 50's is the purest expression of Conservatism.
We could note that even the poorest US states have a GDP per capita comparable to France & Canada, and that US GDP per capita growth has far outstripped the rest of the world since Covid. New York's per capita GDP is double Germany's. Which would mean that the rest of the world hasn't been ripping off the US off (maybe the US has been ripping them off?) and to the extent there is a US economic problem, it is distributional.
Maybe we are victims of our own cynicism. The US hasn't celebrated its accomplishments, and in so doing, we shun the investment, innovation, and immigration that made it possible.
But, it's not a silly or even rhetorical question Brad. A speechwriter could easily have told HRC, "I get what you're trying to say but don't say it like that because that one sentence will be tweeted, etc." Dems are great at speeches and debates but lousy at bumper stickers. The "we're not them" or "read my plan" doesn't travel down into the mines or anywhere else. By 2025, I still don't see a compelling bumper sticker. Relying on a recession to win back a House when that win ought to be a slam dunk--because you cannot get the message across-- is not just a canary in a coal mine...it's a freakin' flock of black lunged fowls.
Bring back J. L. Lewis.