Obama’s Appalachian Tragedy

Wall Street Journal ^ | Nov. 30, 2015 | PAUL H. TICE

[lowbridge]

[mrsmith]

Shackling coal with huge increased regulation at the same time it is struggling to adapt to competition from natural gas is incredibly stupid.
It turns a difficult situation into a disastrous one.
So you gotta figure that was exactly Obama’s intent.

[Mack the knife]

One of the major focuses of Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty was the Appalachian region...

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Lyndon was just continuing the policies of FJK, who made Appalachian poverty a major theme of his campaign for the presidency in 1962.

But why was there such poverty there? He never explained.

He never explained that Appalachian coal powered the electrical plants, so Appalachia prospered. As the demand for electricity grew, so did the price of coal. Then the United Mine Workers pressed for higher and higher wages, and used strikes to enforce their demands, strikes sanctioned by FedGov labor laws; these strikes resulted in interrupted supplies to the electrical generating plants at a time that middle east oil was becoming abundant and cheap.

Consequence 1: electrical generation plants switched from coal to oil, reducing the demand for coal. Once they switched, they did not switch back.

Consequence 2: reduced demand for coal caused the price to plummet. Mines closed, mine workers became unemployed. Poverty arrived.

Now mines are closing again ... not due to labor policies, but due to environmental policies enforced by the EPA. And the mine workers still vote for Democrats who created those policies.

I think those are called “self inflicted wounds”.

[Soul of the South]

“I think those are called “self inflicted wounds”.”

Have you ever been in a coal mine? Have you ever spent time with a former coal miner whose body was destroyed by years of breathing coal dust? The primary reason the UMW was successful organizing the mines is the way employers treated human beings. Paying them low wages and discarding them once their bodies had been destroyed by the abysmal working conditions. The unions may have pushed too far, but they would not have been a factor had the employers not exploited the workers.

As to the textile, apparel, furniture factories, and consumer goods assembly plants, they were nonunion. The big corporations owning those factories paid low wages. The companies lobbied Congress to have tariffs reduced (the free trade movement). Once the tariffs were reduced they moved their capital investment and workers overseas where over the last 20 years they’ve accumulated billions of dollars. Now they demand the government allow them to repatriate these funds without taxation or with a “one time” special low tax rate.

Let’s blame the workers. They are always at fault. /s