Rural Americans don't want job training

[NCDem777]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-effect-coal-retraining-insight/awaiting-trumps-coal-comeback-miners-reject-retraining-idUSKBN1D14G0

Coal miners won't accept any career other than coal.

Could you imagine, if in 2004 when outsourcing was a big thing affecting urban America, urbanites dug in their heels the way these people are doing now? The cries of take their food stamps and Medicaid would be deafening.

[maxsolomon]

1. they should move to the west, then

eastern Montana is their best shot

[TheBlackAdder]

19. They should move east, to the Far East. China is the number one producer and consumer of coal.

[guillaumeb]

2. I have made buggy whips my entire life.

That is my career.

[oasis]

3. Dream on suckers.

You nitwits better take your sorry asses to the nearest community college.

[Corgigal]

4. I remember steel in Buffalo New York,

the giant GM plant in Tarrytown New York. I'm sure they all thought the same way but hunger makes you make other choices.

They aren't the only people who went through these hard times, they need to stop thinking that they are personally special.

[Dulcinea]

71. I remember steel in Pittsburgh.

Most of the mills shut down when I was in junior high & high school. People adjusted in any way they could.

[Turbineguy]

5. Adapt and Overcome.

That's what they teach in the Marines.

[Freedomofspeech]

16. Monitor and Adjust...

That's what we do in education.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

6. They're waiting for their coal jobs to be subsidized by the taxpayers

Until then, they'll wait. Hopefully their children aren't following in their footsteps.

[former9thward]

21. Are you willing to have Green Energy lose their taxpayer subsidies?

[DetlefK]

35. Only if oil and nuclear lose their subsidies as well.

Oil and nuclear are subsidized because they don't have to pay for the pollution they cause.

[former9thward]

42. What pollution does nuclear cause?

Please don't say the used rods. The nuclear industry has recommended site in Nevada for that and politicians of both parties reject it for purely political reasons.

[DetlefK]

43. And who paid for that site?

Who's paying for the disposal and containment of the spent uranium-rods?

Is it the company who created this waste?

[former9thward]

67. The companies are not allowed to use that site.

Are you saying the companies should have to pay for something they are not allowed to use? They are happy to get rid of the waste if the government would let them. They do the exact same thing in France and I don't hear anyone complaining about it.

[elleng]

7. Another thread on the subject:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029781464

[Kirk Lover]

8. Well then they can't get any fucking HANDOUTS and they can SHUT THE FUCK UP PROMPTLY.

[melman]

29. Lovely sentiment

Thanks for sharing that thought.

[DetlefK]

36. Well, to be fair, it's their own sentiment as well.

[JustAnotherGen]

53. Thank you

If they won't take a hand up - then they are now in a position of their own making

[Wellstone ruled]

9. This is a

affinity reaction. About as bad as Stockholm Syndrome. Lived in a area were everyone were waiting for those Logging Jobs to return,and that was forty years after the White Pine Forest's were clear cut and the Mills had long been gone. Yup,them good old days,you betcha.

[NCDem777]

55. These are the same people

who think it's an injustice that urban poor people on food stamps aren't legally required to subsist on gruel and dress in rags

[Wellstone ruled]

56. Going to be really honest as one of the

under lying cause and effects. Spent twenty years in the fore mentioned area. Our local Community was controlled by five families. And as a support mechanism for their control,the four local Churches were complicit in keeping this false narrative alive.

Heard the Critics of what was called Relief Payments at the time. Then on Sunday,the False Profit stood in the Pulpit and railed against that person seen coming out of the Package Store. Yet this False Profit would never get involved in any Volunteer Program to help those in our Community that were struggling. Pass the Plate,need a new Cadillac.

[Duppers]

60. I can believe it.

Last edited Thu Nov 2, 2017, 04:26 PM - Edit history (2)

Listened to my church-going repub mother recite the dog whistles from the pulpit for years. I have given up trying to reason with her because she is too hopelessly brainwashed and becomes hostile at any suggestion her preacher wasn't 100% right.


They have culturally induced mental disorders.

[Wellstone ruled]

61. Thanks for your support.

This is one of the Contributing factors that are preventing Rural America,in many parts,from becoming a full participant in a progressive Economy.

Ignorance is so Blissful. Canada has this figured out as well as Norway,Sweden,Finland,and Holland.

[Duppers]

64. Yes

Indeed, the #1 thing we are fighting in this country is ignorance.


I fixed my typos btw.

[Adrahil]

10. As the old saying goes....

Plan for the future, because the future will not plan for you.

If these folks refuse to see what's coming and DO something about it, they will be left with scraps as the rest of the world prepares.

[TheBlackAdder]

18. +1,673,285

[WhiskeyGrinder]

11. In urban areas, it's easier to not have to move for a job.

When you're 50, moving and training for a job that's not there and isn't guaranteed wherever you go is a little more daunting.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

30. But many of those refusing to retrain

are a LOT younger than 50.

And even 50 isn't too old to retrain. Trust me on that. Even 60, come to think of it.

[Wellstone ruled]

66. Unless you have a Skill Set that is

in demand,the odds of a transition to a new area and new Job opportunity. You are so screwed. Watched great people both Men and Women trapped in a lose lose environment because of personal finances and Lack of Skill Sets.

[TomSlick]

12. But, but, but....

Trump promised them that coal was coming back. Trump wouldn't lie to them - right?

If they were dumb enough to vote from Trump based on his promise coal was coming back, why would they think they needed to prepare for another job?

[brush]

13. If they want to stick in the fossil fuel industry, the need to move to North Dakota.

There are jobs there. The breadwinner of the family should go, get a job then send for the family.

You can't just sit and wait for trump's lies to come through.

[former9thward]

22. Is that what you tell people laid off in urban areas?

To move to the West or South? I have never seen those posts.

[brush]

24. Newsflash: There's an oil boom in N. Dakota. Anyone looking can go there.

[melman]

28. Of course not

And you never will see those posts.

[treestar]

47. It is what right wingers tell them

and these people are often right wingers. I have indeed heard that from right wingers.

[former9thward]

68. There are plenty of people on this thread saying the same thing.

[treestar]

70. I agree, but it may be in reaction

to the idea they were probably right wingers and thus might be hypocritical.

[Amishman]

37. They don't want to move to a different region, which is understandable

Last edited Thu Nov 2, 2017, 06:39 AM - Edit history (1)

Learning a new skill doesn't seem helpful as the root of the problem is a lack of other quality jobs in their area. Retraining still means leaving to find a job. To kill off coal, the affected areas need new employers and training assistance.

Moving from a rural area with no jobs to a boom area is extremely difficult financially.

The equity from a nice $120k home in WV is not going to go far in DC metro. Being down on your luck in a poor area means you might not be financially able to relocate to a high cost of living area.

[Kaleva]

62. I thought the boom collapsed along with the price of oil?

[GreenEyedLefty]

14. I think it's terrible how they were used...

as pawns in a political game. This happens to un- and under-educated people time and again. They were promised jobs. Trump promised to put them back to work.

Yes, they *should* be trained to do other things. Instead they are waiting for Dotard to keep his promise.

It's going to take time, but they will turn on him. The jobs won't come, they will lose their health care. Calling people who want to work dumbasses and ridiculing them is pretty shitty.

[janx]

15. "Rural Americans" ? Please stop.

This article does not reference rural Americans as a whole, just coal miner communities in Pennsylvania--and only a few of those

Please stop with the divisive tactics.

The cries of take their food stamps and Medicaid would be deafening.

English, please.

[MaryMagdaline]

27. Exactly

Shaming poor people.

[TheBlackAdder]

17. Fucking A! I'm 56, and just finished a college degree to stay relevant in the workforce.

The whole point of being alive is to adapt and learn.

[grantcart]

25. Good for you BA

[Dulcinea]

72. I finished a master's degree at age 47.

For the same reason: move with the workforce or get left behind.

[TheBlackAdder]

73. Wow! That's cool. I wouldn't have any hair left if I went for a Masters.

[OhioBlue]

20. outsourcing affected rural communities too.

And... a lot of them did take retraining courses. Setting up and funneling people through retraining programs is easy and I think lots of politicians gave themselves gold stars for it. Making sure people have the aptitude for those professions and job placement is harder. I saw lots of people go through the retraining programs because the federal funds would continue their unemployment if they enrolled by a certain date. It wasn't always the best fit, the employees didn't always have the intention of following up in the career they were training in and some dropped out because they saw an opportunity open up for employment with decent wages and benefits. There were success stories too - I remember some retrained for HVAC or construction and were placed with employers but I don't know what happened after the crash in '08.

Some didn't retrain through a program and have settled for other factory jobs that pay less, lost their seniority or took service jobs.

When a large number of jobs are lost in an industry that provides livable wages it is hard to adjust. Some will retrain, some will move, some will find similar jobs, some will settle for 1 or 2 lower paid jobs, some will hold out hope for comparative jobs to come back.

[Takket]

23. sorry but i'm not cool with destroying the planet so a few thousand people can have a steady

paycheck

[milestogo]

26. Coal mining is a health destroying job in so many ways.

I can't imagine passing an opportunity to get out of it, even if it were still a viable career.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

31. This is hardly new.

I recall many cycles, going back to the 1970's, where jobs were lost, industries shifted, people who wanted jobs needed to move and adapt.

I especially recall in the 1980's, people who dug in their heels, refusing to leave a part of the country where there were no jobs, saying, "My family has been here for generations!" Well, my own ancestors lived in Ireland for several thousand years, but my grandparents, all four of them, left between 1880 and 1900 because there were better opportunities for them across the ocean.

You go where the jobs are. Yeah, I get it that you'd rather stay somewhere, but if you choose to stay where there's no work, please do not ask for me to support you. Move. Change jobs. Get new training. If you decide to cling to a dying industry, do NOT expect support from me.

I think the underlying problem is that there's a notion that a person is entitled to work for the same company/in the same job for a lifetime, and retire from that company/job with a good pension. Alas, that notion is only that. A notion. It's rarely been a reality. There has been a vanishingly few number of people who have worked their entire jobs at one company and the retired with a good pension. Even at the peak of pensions, only around half, maybe fewer, of workers had such a guarantee. Most people never had that. I do get a bit tired of the drumbeat that says, It used to be that EVERYONE had a pension. Wrong. The reason Social Security was enacted was that very few people had jobs with pensions.

Back to the topic at hand. People who aren't willing to change jobs, get new training, deserve little sympathy. And less support.

[KT2000]

32. Lots of retraining here

Two closed paper mills and the state offered retraining. Went to an eye apt and the assistant was a man who used to work at the mill. He knew me as a person who worked against the mill's pollution. He told me he has never been happier - a much better job and he was good at it too. Retraining can be a real life-changer.
Another woman said it was scary forging a new life through retraining but she is so glad she did.
I can't imagine turning down such as opportunity.

[doc03]

33. Well they hope to be recalled to the coal mine. A new employee can make $100000 in

his first year as a miner. You can raise a family with a single income on $100000 when the average per capita income in the area is just over $20000 a year. Some have been recalled. I know one myself that is married with two kids that has been working at a local dairy making around $12 an hour the last couple years. Who can blame him for going back in the mine and making 4 times that much. I know another with a college degree that was a fitness instructor at a local gym, he went in the mine 3 or 4 years ago and says he makes 4 times the income.

[lapfog_1]

34. how about we grow forests of fast growing trees

and we train these folks to make charcoal (and produce electricity from the resulting bonfires) and then they bury the resulting charcoal back into the coal mines

They could restore the mountaintops that were removed in open pit mining era.

sequesters carbon and produces electricity out of renewables and they get to make use of their mining skills.

[Lee-Lee]

38. You realize coal miners make up less than 1% of rural Americans right?

And in the vast, vast majority of “rural America” there never has been and never will be any coal mined, right?

Is your vision of the area between the two coasts that isn’t Chicago just one big swath of coal mines?

Your labeling of all rural Americans as the same based on a story that covers a few people in an industry that accounts for way less than 1% of jobs in “rural America” is a great example of how out of touch so many democrats are.

You should get outside your urban bubble now and then. And actually interact with people, not drive through small towns and rural areas like it’s a safari.

[treestar]

46. if they are right wingers

they have undue influence on the vote, yet act hypocritical as the city people who are poor should just move, which is what they say about the urban poor. We are assuming they are right wingers, but that is a reasonable assumption.

When does anyone ever tell them maybe they should get out of their bubble and learn what happens to urban people, especially with their disproportionate power in voting?

[lindysalsagal]

39. I'd like to see more workers for the aged: Set a decent minimum wage and healthcare

and open facilities for aged, and sick and mentally affected and drug addicted. Put people to work caring for those who desperately need it, and set a livable wage and subsidized housing. Could staff youth centers for teens, too. Day-care for toddlers.

Our aged population is exploding and nurses are over-worked. Retrain people to assist them.

Gonna take investment and committment but we'll have a better world.

[Orrex]

40. Then they can go fuck themselves, every last one of them

[Vinca]

41. I don't get it. Coal mining is a dirty, dangerous job. The pay can't possibly equal the risk.

You'd think they'd be grateful for an opportunity to do something else with their lives that doesn't involve black lung disease.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

44. "Coal jobs are preferable to those in natural gas, they said, because the mines are close to home"

That's pretty much the explanation, right there.

Complaining about people in rural communities not wanting to move isn't much unlike people complaining about folks in poor inner cities not moving to areas with better employment opportunities. Both groups tend to be poor too. Some of the poorest counties in this country are in rural areas that used to offer coal mining jobs.

Rural voters are more likely to vote for Republicans, however, so it's understandable that they'd receive less sympathy here.

Edit: States like West Virginia USED to vote for Democrats fairly recently. Lack of sympathy for their situation didn't help matters.

[treestar]

45. right wingers say you should move to where

the jobs are. So when they are right wingers, they are being hypocritical. We could have programs to subsidize moving, but that would help the poor, who should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, except when it's me.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

48. Some right wingers say that.

Most right wingers accept various myths that make them feel good about themselves: God, whiteness* and Murika!

* This includes "white culture", not just outright white supremacist attitudes. (They might like a black person who behaves and talks like them.)

[treestar]

49. could be why they don't want to move to the cities

and end up city slickers which they think are unAmerican. For the heck of it I listen to current country music, always praising the small town life and considering its customs to be the American ones. The true America. They think it is only them.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

54. Yep.

They have notions of what it means "to be an American", and it applies to them.

I personally wish people would be more concerned about what's best for humanity as a whole. I didn't even notice many Democrats in this country fretting about the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed in Dumbya's idiotic invasion. It's pretty rare to hear even a liberal question the idea that soldiers are "protecting our freedom" when most of their actions (mostly as pawns by following orders) seem to be endangering us and the rest of the world instead.

No real direction other than faith in corporate tyrannies and so-called free markets (another myth). NSC 68 (from 1950) is still the blueprint in which this country operates: Large defense spending to promote USA "exceptionalism" around the globe AND to provide a Keynesian stimulus for capitalism that would likely "repeat history" and demonstrate more frequent economic depressions without it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC-68

Corporations get all kinds of taxpayer-funded R&D out of it, a major cost-savings for them. They can profit from the stuff after it's practical and marketable. The internet, communications, etc.

We could've had Keynesian stimulus from more investments in infrastructure, which would apply to both the plight of inner cities and poor rural areas, but NSC 68 still rules the day. It has a lot of inertia after all these years, unfortunately.

[NCDem777]

57. They might get more sympathy

if they had sympathy for others. And not just when a bad thing happens to them. For example:

When urbanites, particularly in places like Cleveland and Pittsburgh, were saying "Hey maybe we should make outsourcing harder," in 2003-2004. Did they have sympathy for us? Fuck no. Most rural Republicans told us that we should stop being lazy, get off our butts and learn new skills. Stop expecting the government to protect our jobs and revive dying industries they said. Move to where the jobs are. They said that companies should have the freedom to outsource jobs and screw consumers. They were secure in the knowledge that the bad stuff would only happen to the big immoral cities. Outsourcing and corporate corruption (like say, and I'm just using an example from my backyard, an energy company concealing, with the help of the state government, a coal ash spill that contaminated wells and rivers) would never happen in "God's country."

And then it did.

[Adrahil]

63. What kind of sympathy am I supposed to have?

Democrats have offered job training (which they reject), regional economic transformation (which they reject), and social support programs (which they use, but still think hate other people who do too).

Short of reopening the coal mines and condemning thousands to black lung, what do they want?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

74. Regional economic transformation.

I usually don't read about that. If that's happening and they're rejecting that too, then my hypothesis is wrong.

I assumed that most of them simply didn't want to move.

Personally, I hate large cities and it would take a LOT to make me move to one. That's true for any large city and the racial demographics are irrelevant. I don't even like being around tens of thousands of people at a sporting event. Something about it disturbs me at a fundamental level. My ancestors were farmers, including my parents in their younger days, so maybe many years of "natural selection" made that environment more appealing to me? I don't know. I assume that most people from the past in those rural areas left for the "big cities" a long time ago if it suited them, leaving mostly people who preferred living there. The people who remained had children with each other. Etc.

What I mostly hear and read is that those people "need to move to where the jobs are located", such as cities. That may not jibe with many of them.

[Deb]

50. Rural?! It's the County Seat

Take a google picture search. Traffic lights, stores, restaurants, college, police department, sewage....

[JustAnotherGen]

51. Move - I did

No jobs of 'value' in Rochester NY in late 2005 so I picked up an moved to NJ. 1 bedroom apartment rent increased by $600. Never wanted to leave family and life long friends.

Move - or remain obsolete.

[muntrv]

52. I saw this post on Daily Kos. Several responders said they had fathers and grandfathers

who worked in coal mines and they strongly advised their sons against working in them.

[DrDan]

58. looks to me like coal miners are rejecting retraining, not "Rural Americans"

[Demsrule86]

59. The trouble is that 'retraining' is a dirty world in the Mid West...when jobs left (stolen) by

rich guys like Romney for big profit...'retraining' was it...why hey the plant is closing but...retraining...only those jobs left too or didn't exist.

[lovemydogs]

65. the false hope is caused by low paying jobs as replacement and fear of the unknown

The jobs replacing the coal jobs presents the same problem for displaced factory workers. The new jobs pay little more then minimum wage and lack benefits.

Many feel being retrained is a waste of time because of this.

My sister in law lost her factory job of 20+ years and went through job training to get a warehouse job that pays very little and lacks benefits.
This is the problem many former factory workers here in the midwest face.

The new economy is not addressing the needs of everyday people

[LittleBlue]

69. Retraining for a low-wage job that will either be outsourced or automated

Unless you have high level skills, or can do something that a robot can't, you won't have a job in 30 years.