West Virginia's population peaked in 1950 with the rise of coal, and it's never recovered. With little farming land, a relatively poorly educated population, and a legislature that is owned and operated by big extractive and predatory-business interests, the state remains the fourth poorest in the nation.
Worth noting that the decline in coal jobs began with the shift to open cut mining 50+ years ago, and has continued with increasing automation above ground. Nothing to do with Greenhouse gas emissions.
ReplyDelete"Here’s why Central Appalachia’s coal industry is dying"
http://wapo.st/1lelz7C
Also note that the environment has suffered from these changes ... though there would have been a lot more black lung disease if underground mining had persisted.
Mildly funny story: I used to work for union retirees (all of them), and did a hit job on Newt Gingrich who was killing Medicare and other chicanery. It was just before Christmas, and so the gig was a "Gingrich who Stole Christmas" event with a massive piece of coal in the background referencing the old "coal in the stocking" meme. After the event, I get back to the office and it's the United Mine Workers (Richard Trumpka's office) who had seen it on CNN and wanted to know what union mine I had gotten the coal out of. "It was Paper Mache" I said, "and it was a union artist that made it!" He was too.
ReplyDeleteAnd that, ladies and gentlemen, is why unions are dying.