How to Transform Struggling Towns?

[Jhhnn]

Rocky Mountains are full of ghost towns when silver/whatever mine went bust.

It's bad policy and anti-capitalistic to subsidize dying towns who cannot transform and innovate.

They have options, but I'll support helping budding industries, but it comes with some expectations of change.

Yeh, that would be soshulism, and soshulism is Bad, Mkay? Gillette is just behind the curve of that good old Job Creator activity. They giveth, and they taketh away in a God-like fashion. Witness the Rust Belt. It's particularly tough for a place like Gillette where there's not really much to recommend it other than what were decent paying jobs related to coal & a bit of ranching. Money always goes out & coal was what brought it in.

 

[theeedude]

Here in WV it would go along way if we didn't prop coal up on a pedestal and worship it like the 2A. Coal is beaten into the brains of grade school children much like religion was for most of us. It's just another form of control to keep the people in line while the politicians line their pockets with coal donations.

The myth of good paying coal jobs comes with the caveat that you're exchanging having a long life for money. Then after you retire there is a good chance that the company files for bankruptcy and the pension and benefits you were promised disappears. And don't forget the environmental impact from the runoff, damns and the unground mine fires that will still be burning after you and I are gone.

You all have seen bits and pieces of Trump rallies but they pale in comparison to the ones a coal company has. If you get a chance watch the 'Blood on the Mountain' documentary.

https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/blood-on-the-mountain

Taxpayers just had to bail out miner pensions, because it's our problem they picked shitty jobs.

 

[Jhhnn]

Taxpayers just had to bail out miner pensions, because it's our problem they picked shitty jobs.

Speaking of shitty, that's a really shitty elitist attitude you're sporting.

 

[digiram]

Green New Deal.

 

[brycejones]

Taxpayers just had to bail out miner pensions, because it's our problem they picked shitty jobs.

I have no problem with bailing out pensions. I don’t want people starving in their old age.

The real problem is not doing more to hold those accountable for putting this pension funds in that position in the first place. And the horrible flaws in our pension regulations that enabled them.

 

[theeedude]

I have no problem with bailing out pensions. I don’t want people starving in their old age.

The real problem is not doing more to hold those accountable for putting this pension funds in that position in the first place. And the horrible flaws in our pension regulations that enabled them.

If you keep bailing out pensions, that's enabling them.

 

[Vic]

Taxpayers just had to bail out miner pensions, because it's our problem they picked shitty jobs.

If they had picked shitty jobs, they wouldn't be in the position of being able to force the taxpayers into bailing out their pensions.

 

[Jhhnn]

If you keep bailing out pensions, that's enabling them.

Enabling who? Honest people who worked their whole lives, serving & believing in the system?

 

[Vic]

Speaking of shitty, that's a really shitty elitist attitude you're sporting.

Sorry, but elitist is seeing nothing wrong with the govt bailing out your pension while at the same time complaining that big city welfare queens are the reason you pay so much in taxes.

 

[brycejones]

If you keep bailing out pensions, that's enabling them.

The pensioners didn’t cause the problem.

 

[Jaskalas]

I think actual affordable housing across the country would help. Maybe some kind of resettlement/moving package to help. Instead of propping up dying towns with no prospects for growth. Make it easier and more feasible for these people to move elsewhere.

Basic Income + Federal Loan Program.
The UBI pays for the home. And since it is guaranteed "income", the loan is guaranteed. It will never default by means of income. Not ever.
And think about it. With basic sustainability, who cares what the town does? Go where you will. Live where you will. Take whatever opportunity you want, your income, you life, is not locked down to a job in a backwater !@#hole. People will have the means to relocate, and or hunker down. As they want. Freedom via liquidity to the people.

 

[fskimospy]

Use fiscal and monetary policy to create a situation of full employment and let the towns figure it out.

 

[Jaskalas]

Use fiscal and monetary policy to create a situation of full employment and let the towns figure it out.

Heralding employment seems a bit much like throwing money at jerb creators while ignoring those left behind. In theory the tone of what you say makes sense... but not for an increasingly automated economy where the value of labor just keeps plummeting. If we aren't competing against slave labor overseas, it is automation here at home. Then there are all the people who do not qualify or don't fit the mold. And we lose the incredible benefits a more substantial policy can bring. Such as truly letting those towns "figure it out" by setting their people free.

We should tackle employment...after we tackle basic sustenance and housing needs. I think such an economy would be ripe for opportunities. In a round about way, it may help us achieve the stated goal of yours.

 

[Bitek]

Yeh, that would be soshulism, and soshulism is Bad, Mkay? Gillette is just behind the curve of that good old Job Creator activity. They giveth, and they taketh away in a God-like fashion. Witness the Rust Belt. It's particularly tough for a place like Gillette where there's not really much to recommend it other than what were decent paying jobs related to coal & a bit of ranching. Money always goes out & coal was what brought it in.

You prune trees and vegetables to limit the energy wasted on unproductive branches and allow focus on the healthiest growth in order to thrive.

If a town loses its reason to exist and can't invent a new one, encouraging it to suck energy from the rest of the wider community to keep a failing town from collapsing just damages the whole.

 

[pmv]

Maybe just dismantle the towns and rebuild them, brick-by-brick, where the jobs and opportunities are?

Or put them on wheels.

I remember really liking these novels when I was an adolescent SF geek.

Cities in Flight - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ch33zw1z]

UBI, MFA, renewable energy

 

[theeedude]

The pensioners didn’t cause the problem.

They accepted company credit risk when they took jobs with pension as major part of their compensation.

 

[Jhhnn]

They accepted company credit risk when they took jobs with pension as major part of their compensation.

And we, as a society, agreed to back up that arrangement in allowing it to exist in the first place. It's not like trickle down retirement savings plans have served us nearly as well as traditional pensions did in the postwar era-

The State of American Retirement: How 401(k)s have failed most American workers

The shift from pensions to account-type savings plans has been a disaster for lower-income, black, Hispanic, non-college-educated, and single workers, who together add up to a majority of the American population. But even among upper-income white college-educated married couples, many do not...

www.epi.org

It's a lot more complicated than your ideological pontificating indicates.

 

[theeedude]

And we, as a society, agreed to back up that arrangement in allowing it to exist in the first place. It's not like trickle down retirement savings plans have served us nearly as well as traditional pensions did in the postwar era-

The State of American Retirement: How 401(k)s have failed most American workers

The shift from pensions to account-type savings plans has been a disaster for lower-income, black, Hispanic, non-college-educated, and single workers, who together add up to a majority of the American population. But even among upper-income white college-educated married couples, many do not...

www.epi.org

It's a lot more complicated than your ideological pontificating indicates.

We didn't agree to back it up as a society at the time those pensions were promised. That's why a separate law had to be passed to bail out coal miner pensions when they actually went bankrupt. So now, instead of either paying these employees more or setting enough money aside for their pensions, these private companies can pay their employees with pension promises that taxpayers later have to pay.