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"Working class material self-interest includes cheap energy" is perhaps the biggest thing contemporary progressives miss about economic policy.
The fracking revolution, by reducing heating costs for poor families in the US, saved about 12,500 lives annually, mostly in places with concentrated poverty.
Paper by @seema.bsky.social/Janjala Chirakijja/Pinchuan Ong. Few years old but new to me!
seemajayachandran.com/heating_mort...
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Agree. The big disconnect is whether or not the promise made can actually be fulfilled ? Can it be an outright lie ? What we have learned, is that it can be.
Trump sold his own version of "hope and change " The operative word being sold.
His sales skills were the difference
I think the big issue fundamentally is that progressives have been unwilling to make the procedural reforms to permitting that would enable us to build out clean energy fast enough to be a superior alternative over dirty energy. We don’t need to lie, we need to deliver a better product
One thing I proposed was to completely buy out the coal industry. For about 36b , you could buy all the coal plants (at a nice profit for owners ), give their customers 5 to 10 yrs to transition and give all employees full pay till retirement.
Take out coal and other paths get simpler
Thoughts?
Matt Darling
@besttrousers.bsky.social
I think this makes a lot of sense as an economic policy, but important to remember that occupation is also a form of identity.
November 29, 2024 at 10:43 AM
1 repost
133 likes
Yes. The other problem is coal replacement is easier than replacing the labor intensity of the industry and regional leaders don’t want to see labor migration to other areas. It’s not just identity but direct economic interest in the physical equity you put in a place.
The issue you will hear county leaders talk about all the time is how to keep up services, home values, ext when a plant that had 150 people working in it at high wages and provided a big spending engine is replaced with one that has five.
So to make the scheme work you need to also bail out the county budgets at least if not home values.
It's insane in terms of spending but "buying out incumbent homeowners out of asset-based wealth" ends up being a policy proposal we keep coming back to. There's just no way to orchestrate a real attempt at abundance without addressing/protecting their relative advantages.
What about building the abundance in developing countries, who will probably be happily disrupted out of poverty, and reclassify currently rich countries as living museums of vested interests? 😉
Boy do I have a thing or two to tell you about vested interests in developing countries…
It’s not just individual identity either. It’s inter-generational. Parents and children expect and/or hope to be in roughly the same line of work, either occupationally or sectorally.
Coal mining employment has been declining for decades since Wyoming pit mining requires a fraction of the labor of wv mining so unless there’s a plan to reverse these efficiency gains the idea of coal mines as employment program is pretty strange
Doesn’t stop people from thinking that the employment will all come back once climate and environmental regulations have been gutted and subsidies are thrown at it.
It’s almost like a cargo cult.
This is why the occupational training for green energy is so important for a transition away from fossil fuel dependence.
Austin has been really good about this at the Community College level thanks to local officials.
You really think 50+yrs old dudes are in for training?
Without a doubt. With good training programs assisted by Ed/Psych AI/LLMs there are a lot of green energy jobs they could fill. If they didn't want to then a rolling phase out would be preferable to a government enforced industry schism. It's going happen based on profitability trends either way.
As occupation is a form of identity, so does a regions economic engines impact its peoples culture and attitudes.
Perfect word choice for highlighting the selective application of “identity politics”
Wyoming produces 41% of us coal with a labor force of less than 5000 people