(01-20-2017 03:35 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 03:29 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(01-20-2017 03:22 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Walking a mile in the other guys shoes...

My name is Joe Black. I am 50 years old, a high school graduate, class of 1985. I am a miner for the Dirty Coal Company in Littleton, WV. My wife is a homemaker. I have two daughters, Kelly, 25, married to a guy who is also a miner at DCC, with two kids, 6 and 3, and Allison, a junior At Marshall studying to be a teacher. I am a union member and a lifelong Democrat.

One day on TV, I hear Hillary Clinton promise to put coal miners out of work. Damn, I think, what if that's me and/or my son-in-law? what do we do then? But then the next day, she adds, that of course we will get those miners retrained.

I think, I guess that means if I lose my job, they will give me six months of federal assistance and food stamps while we learn to operate some sort of machine. Then, I'll probably have to move to Wheeling or some other big town, and compete with my son-in-law and 100 other ex-miners for a half dozen jobs that pay less than I make now. Allison may have to drop out of school, and Kelly and my wife may have to find waitress jobs.

I think I'll just vote for the other guy.

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Me talking now.

Now we have had lots of jobs evolve out of the economy before. Buggy whip makers and livery stable workers, for example. But they were gradual and related to market forces. There was never a candidate swearing to put buggy whip makers and livery stable workers out of work to help the car industry, and offering to retrain them for something.

Bottom line here, people want what they have NOW, not pie in the sky.

I don't think a lot of people don't understand the appeal of what trump is saying (or the damage Hillary did with that quote). I think the difference is that many people don't but into the idea that you can bring those jobs back, that they are a lost cause due to forces bigger than even the US gov't (hello invisible hand). So those people say well, let's find something else, find some other way to let those people earn a good living doing something else since they can no longer earn a good living doing what they did.

To me, that is much more realistic, forward thinking, and a better plan, than doubling down on a dying gig like the buggy whip makers. But I understand the appeal of the language.

Coal mining jobs are headed the way of livery stable jobs, and at about the same pace.

Still need a definition of " universal basic income type idea of retraining", not for argument, but to understand.

It was a typo - OR not OF

Basic income is the idea that, in simplest terms, everyone is provided X dollars, regardless of income. Retraining would be a focus on providing access to training programs/apprenticeships for those who previously worked in say, coal mining.