Quote :

"But there is a crux: most of these workers have worked there fore decades. Do you seriously believe none of them ever had an opportunity to get a job for less pay elsewhere? Maybe save up enough money to move to another region?"

IOW, it's their own dumb fault for dieing at work, and nothing else needs to be said or done?

4/7/2010 2:19:41 PM

I suppose you could put them in prison for daring to exercise their own rights. But that sounds silly.

Like I said, lots can be said. There is a lot left to be desired in terms of educating workers about the danger they face. An agency to do that would be awesome.

That said, more to my call center suggestion, I suspect very strongly that even miners are more likely to die driving to work than they are on the job. As such, even if they did quit their job to take a call center position, it would probably not impact their life expectancy very much.

4/7/2010 2:24:42 PM

Seriously. Life contains risk. We're never going to legislate away all risks, we're just going to lose our freedom trying to protect everyone from everything. It should be the individual's choice how much risk they want to take on, no one else's.

4/7/2010 2:34:01 PM

Quote :

"^^ If that isn't true, then neither are the rest. Customers can grow their own food. Workers can too. An Employer technically has the same option of growing their own food. But I doubt they would like it any more than most workers."

You're assuming these people own land.

My point is that once a business is established, hiring/firing isn't a matter of survival for employers as it is for individuals. Steve Jobs will still be able to afford all the food and turtlenecks he wants, whether Apple hires 100 people or fires 100 people. One scenario will certainly be optimal given a certain set of circumstances, but nether will break Apple.

4/7/2010 2:44:51 PM

just a quick google search

http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/os/osar0006.pdf

Quote :

"The rate of fatal injuries in the coal mining industry in 2006 was 49.5 per 100,000 workers, nearly twelve times the rate for all private industry. This represents an 84 percent increase from the 2005 rate of 26.8 fatalities per 100,000 workers. "

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

The chart at the bottom of this link puts traffic fatalities at about 20-21 deaths per 100,000 liscensed drivers.



seems like the comparison depends on the year used for mining fatalities

4/7/2010 2:45:58 PM

^^^ you're missing the point.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36202623/ns/us_news-life

This company had heaps of violations against it, but the CEO used his power and influence to skirt the law.

Why would anyone argue against a system that makes deadly criminals get their due as you and LoneSnark are doing?

4/7/2010 2:47:31 PM

I'm not against the company being held responsible for any wrongdoing on their part.

Quote :

"My point is that once a business is established, hiring/firing isn't a matter of survival for employers as it is for individuals. Steve Jobs will still be able to afford all the food and turtlenecks he wants, whether Apple hires 100 people or fires 100 people. One scenario will certainly be optimal given a certain set of circumstances, but nether will break Apple."

Working at Apple is not a matter of survival for any of the employees, either. All of the employees who work there have plenty of other options for employment. One scenario will certainly be optimal given a certain set of circumstances, but nether will break Apple the employee.

[Edited on April 7, 2010 at 2:53 PM. Reason : ^]

4/7/2010 2:48:40 PM

Quote :

"Seriously. Life contains risk. We're never going to legislate away all risks, we're just going to lose our freedom trying to protect everyone from everything. It should be the individual's choice how much risk they want to take on, no one else's."

Fuckin A. However, the mine owners/managers are the ones choosing how much risk to impart on the miners and there should be rules to protect the workers.

Even in less dangerous settings than coal mines.

[Edited on April 7, 2010 at 3:09 PM. Reason : .]

4/7/2010 3:01:37 PM

Quote :

"My point is that once a business is established, hiring/firing isn't a matter of survival for employers as it is for individuals."

I guess you have never heard of GM (sans bailout).

Employees are a critical aspect of your business. You hire enough wrong ones, you will go out of business or beg for help. But I dont expect you to understand boone.

4/7/2010 3:02:32 PM

^^ And you think the miners have no say in that? They have other options, as I've already pointed out. They just don't like the other options as much, so they accept the conditions. You may think that's a bad choice, but it's not your choice to make.

4/7/2010 3:07:13 PM

It's a shared responsibility.
A person should be able to work at a place and not have to worry about his boss making decisions that put his life in more risk.

You think otherwise. You're a douche.

4/7/2010 3:10:02 PM

People can do that. Millions of people do. Some jobs entail more risk than others, and those who choose to work there accept those risks because they think it is worth it. You think people should be able to work without any hazards? Sounds great! Why stop there? Let's make a law that all jobs must be completely safe, pay at least ten million dollars, and you only work when you feel like it. You don't want that? You must be a douche.

4/7/2010 3:13:51 PM

It is not unreasonable to suggest that a mining company adhere to guidelines that mitigate the risk of mining. The fact that mining is inherently risky doesn't mean you should just throw caution to the wind and not waste any time regulating it.

I'm not sure how you got from this to "everything must be completely safe, pay ten million dollars" etc, but then you are a troll.

4/7/2010 3:16:37 PM

Regulation doesn't have to come from government. I just happen to believe that people can decide for themselves how much risk to take on for what reward. If it is worth it to them, great. If not, then they have other options. If the workers decide they need safer conditions, they can force the employer to increase safety. Of course, that probably would mean reduced pay, so then they may decide it's not worth it after all.

Or, we could just make a law that requires them to work for less so they can be safer. Because we know better than they do what's best for them, right?

4/7/2010 3:19:34 PM

It does have to come from the government, because business owners have proven time and time again that without regulation from the people with the guns they will fuck over the workers.

This is what workers will look like in your crazy world:


I mean, if they're not blown apart in methane explosions.

[Edited on April 7, 2010 at 3:30 PM. Reason : .]

4/7/2010 3:29:28 PM

Wrong.

Quote :

"If the workers decide they need safer conditions, they can force the employer to increase safety. Of course, that probably would mean reduced pay, so then they may decide it's not worth it after all."

The workers are perfectly capable of attaining safer working conditions if they want them. It just comes at the sacrifice of something else (such as pay). Nothing is free. Why do you feel the need to make this decision for them?

4/7/2010 3:32:11 PM

If you get killed in an automobile accident, it's your fault for getting in your car. You could have chosen to stay home and not work. Highways and streets are inherently dangerous places, so you should have known better. That's the risk you take. There should be no regulation of speed or safety on the highways, because you can simply not drive.

4/7/2010 3:38:21 PM

Quote :

"If the workers decide they need safer conditions, they can force the employer to increase safety. "

True, and these are called unions. Unions suck, often act irrationally, and a much worse alternative compared to current gov't intervention.

4/7/2010 3:44:12 PM

Quote :

"If you get killed in an automobile accident, it's your fault for getting in your car. You could have chosen to stay home and not work. Highways and streets are inherently dangerous places, so you should have known better. That's the risk you take."

Ok, I'm following you here.......

Quote :

"There should be no regulation of speed or safety on the highways, because you can simply not drive."

and, you lost me.

I never said there should be no rules in place to increase safety. But the rules should be determined by the people who actually work there. They are the ones living with the risk, and they are the ones receiving the benefits of it. If they are satisfied, then why should we step in and force it to change? You are only considering one side of the equation. Safer environments. Ok, but at what cost? And who should decide how much is too much?


^ The main problem with unions is all of the legislation surrounding them. There's no way bureaucrats in Washington can decide what's better for the workers than the actual workers can. But I'm sure they'd love to try.

[Edited on April 7, 2010 at 3:52 PM. Reason : ^]

4/7/2010 3:47:30 PM

Sure workers can demand better conditions, But what if the workers are misinformed on how safe the mine is?


I highly doubt all of the mine workers are experts on mine ventilation, or mine design. Not to mention that large companies are pretty good at showering workers with propaganda, which is often full of half-truths to spin the company in a better light

[Edited on April 7, 2010 at 3:59 PM. Reason : makes more sense now]

[Edited on April 7, 2010 at 4:01 PM. Reason : and misspellings]

4/7/2010 3:55:39 PM

A)You're insane for agreeing with the sentiment of the first part. It's not your fault if you're killed in an automobile accident (that was someone else's fault). You should reasonably be able to expect to convey from place A to place B without being killed by someone else's automobile, and safety laws and regulations help make that happen.

B)Without the government, these laws and regulations will not exist. The only way for them to exist is for people that have the power to enforce them to do so. With a population the size of the U.S., government elected or otherwise is the only option. What you are suggesting is that without the government enforcing highway safety laws, people would band together and enforce them because they collectively decide it's what's best. See Somalia for a working example.

4/7/2010 3:57:20 PM

^^ Yes, they would need to be educated about the risks. I would be willing to bet that miners are far more aware of the potential risks than you or I.

^ First, you never said anything about another vehicle. You didn't say what caused the accident. I could have just driven my car into a pole going 120 mph all on my own. But really it doesn't matter whose fault it is. There are accepted risks anytime I take my car out.

Second, we're not talking about public infrastructure. We're talking about private business.

Quote :

"The only way for [regulations] to exist is for people that have the power to enforce them to do so."

The workers do have power. The workers have the power to shut the business down if they decide to.

[Edited on April 7, 2010 at 4:15 PM. Reason : .]

4/7/2010 4:15:05 PM

the other option if you dont have business freedom is poverty. take your pick.

4/7/2010 4:15:13 PM

Quote :

"If you get killed in an automobile accident, it's your fault for getting in your car. You could have chosen to stay home and not work. Highways and streets are inherently dangerous places, so you should have known better. That's the risk you take. There should be no regulation of speed or safety on the highways, because you can simply not drive."

Like all property, it is the owners responsibility to determine the rules that will be followed by others on their property. As it happens, the government owns the roads, and therefore the responsibility for determining the rules of operation falls to the government.

So, hypothetically speaking, if we have a privately owned and operated road, then yes, it should operate without government regulation beyond force or fraud. But the first acts of the private road owner will be to determine the rules of that road, and those rules will involve speed limits and other rules for safety-sake. The road owner will throw bad drivers off their road for the same reason Best Buy throws out bad customers: they scare away good customers, hurt reputations, and drive up costs.

Mine workers have worn hard-hats since long before they were required to by law. Wearing hard-hats was required by management, and you could be fired for not wearing one while in the mine. The reason is as we have said: falling rocks tend to kill unprotected miners, and deaths in your mine make headlines, making it hard to attract workers. It also makes it hard on other workers, whose families see the danger and encourage them to find work elsewhere.

4/7/2010 4:33:03 PM

Quote :

"Like all property, it is the owners responsibility to determine the rules that will be followed by others on their property."

Are you saying "ideally" this is true? Because in the real world this certainly isn't true.

Quote :

"Mine workers have worn hard-hats since long before they were required to by law. Wearing hard-hats was required by management, and you could be fired for not wearing one while in the mine. The reason is as we have said: falling rocks tend to kill unprotected miners, and deaths in your mine make headlines, making it hard to attract workers. It also makes it hard on other workers, whose families see the danger and encourage them to find work elsewhere."

Yeah, that totally explains why we've never had child labor or anything.

In reality, low mine wages and having to work in an unsafe mine comes from a market failure known as monopsony.

4/7/2010 6:35:49 PM

For the people defending shoddy business practices in this thread, what should have been different in this case?

It seems like you're saying that nothing should have been different, and things worked as they should have, which clearly isn't the case.

4/7/2010 6:42:41 PM

Quote :

"Are you saying "ideally" this is true? Because in the real world this certainly isn't true."

So you've never heard of a land owner telling someone to leave, and then they being made to leave?

Quote :

"In reality, low mine wages and having to work in an unsafe mine comes from a market failure known as monopsony."

The evidence is against you. Miners earn more in hourly compensation than workers at large. This fact alone proves monopsony is not the situation. "The average coal miner makes $21.57 per hour" and happens to live in places with a very low cost of living.

Quote :

"It seems like you're saying that nothing should have been different, and things worked as they should have, which clearly isn't the case."

I said what should have been different. We need to eliminate the meddlesome-outsider position occupied by government regulators, and the culture of secrecy it engenders (workers sometimes hide unsafe conditions because they too get punished when OSHA makes a house-call). We should also create a government agency to rate workplaces based on safety and create more effective transparency. It can be argued that miners today don't know what they are getting themselves into, which is an actionable problem that government can solve, if only it chose to use the right tools.

4/7/2010 6:59:29 PM

Quote :

"So you've never heard of a land owner telling someone to leave, and then they being made to leave?"

I can sure as hell bet you if I put up a sign that says "climb at your own risk" on my stairs I'll still get sued if someone falls down them.

Quote :

"The evidence is against you. Miners earn more in hourly compensation than workers at large. This fact alone proves monopsony is not the situation. "The average coal miner makes $21.57 per hour" and happens to live in places with a very low cost of living."

You're comparing them against all workers, which isn't the case. Not everyone is able or willing to be a miner. Monopsony only bids down the wages and safety levels for miners.

Your argument is something akin to if I had a monopoly on gold and I justified it by saying "look, bronze costs less, I must not have a monopoly on gold!"

[Edited on April 7, 2010 at 7:11 PM. Reason : ]

4/7/2010 7:09:15 PM

What does that prove? I can sue you right now, although I've never met you. More to the point, it would have been hard for me to fall down your stairs if you had me arrested for trespassing. If I am misusing your stairs, tell me to leave, then have me arrested. Being your property, that is your right.

The wages of miners looks even better if you limit it only to those that are able to be miners, namely those living in mining communities but not working for a mine. Coal mining regions tend to have the lowest wages in the nation, while miners in those regions earn wages competitive with the rest of the nation. Must be the risk premium having nothing to do with monopsony.

So, again, I have lots of evidence disproving your theory. Your only defense of your theory is that some people choose not to be miners? WTF? To have a monopsony, then everyone in town must have NO choice of employer. That the vast majority of the town's labor force works elsewhere is proof. That wages are locally very competitive is proof. That wages are nationally competitive is even more proof. Your theory is bunk.

4/7/2010 11:16:59 PM

Quote :

"This company had heaps of violations against it, but the CEO used his power and influence to skirt the law."

For real.

What I wonder is why anyone is trying to argue about economic systems when the whole crux of the issue is explained in that sentence right there?

How can you use this situation to make judgments on the degree of regulation and the "free market", whatever someone may consider it to be, when the specific matter involved people effectively acting above or outside the law?

In this case, I'd consider the issue to be the merger of corporate power with corrupt government. The conclusion we can reach is that if laws and regulations exist, they must be enforced, or the system breaks down or fails in some way. As God said, the problem here lies with the regulators, and they deserve to be fired.

...But using the situation here to draw conclusions about the free market, or really any economic system? Why? It's absurd and baseless, in this particular case. If you're going to argue about the degree of corporate regulation necessary in society, it's a basic assumption that the regulators are going to do their jobs, and here they did not.

[Edited on April 7, 2010 at 11:39 PM. Reason : .]

4/7/2010 11:38:22 PM

^ Quite true. But one of the arguments against regulation is that regulation can breed corruption. And that the corruption produced can sometimes be worse than what the regulation was trying to fix.

4/8/2010 12:03:29 AM

Quote :

"What does that prove?"

It proves that I cannot determine the rules that are followed on my property.

Quote :

"So, again, I have lots of evidence disproving your theory."

What? The point is that the market for miners is no different than that for any other market, it cannot be combined with that of ALL laborers. This mine has a monopsony on miner labor in that area. What the hell kind of evidence do you have against that?

4/8/2010 12:25:33 AM

Yes, the police can arrest you for murder, no matter what you want to happen. The same goes for the secret service in the White House. But 95% of the time, it is up to the owner to decide what is and is not going to happen on the property.

If these miners were trapped in monopsony, it would be reflected in lower wages. It is not. Therefore, there is no monopsony. You cannot just say things are so, when the factual evidence to demonstrate otherwise is this readily available.

And to suggest that a miner is incapable of performing any other GED requiring occupation is absurd. Far fewer workers work in the mines today than they did just ten years ago. These displaced workers did not starve to death, they found work elsewhere.

4/8/2010 1:04:21 AM

Quote :

"But 95% of the time, it is up to the owner to decide what is and is not going to happen on the property."

So then it's not true?

Quote :

"If these miners were trapped in monopsony, it would be reflected in lower wages."

Yes, and worse working conditions.

Quote :

"It is not. Therefore, there is no monopsony. You cannot just say things are so, when the factual evidence to demonstrate otherwise is this readily available."

You say that other people make less, that's not proof. If you could find other people in the same area in the same market that make less, then you may have some kind of point, but comparing miner wages to that of supermarket employees or minimum wage is just stupid. The price of car tires is irrelevant to whether or not there is a monopoly on strawberries, they are separate markets.

Quote :

"And to suggest that a miner is incapable of performing any other GED requiring occupation is absurd."

I'm not saying that, I said the opposite.

4/8/2010 7:17:09 PM

The only user to make sense in this thread is tromboner950.

4/8/2010 8:29:13 PM

None of the armchair dumb asses in this thread have mentioned anything about worker's comp and liability insurance.

4/8/2010 9:07:25 PM

Quote :

"You say that other people make less, that's not proof. If you could find other people in the same area in the same market that make less, then you may have some kind of point, but comparing miner wages to that of supermarket employees or minimum wage is just stupid. The price of car tires is irrelevant to whether or not there is a monopoly on strawberries, they are separate markets."

Supermarkets and mines share mostly the same pool of unskilled workers. The problem is that theres not enough unskilled work for the miners to do something else (they cant all work at the grocery store).

The current congress/administration's solution to this problem is simply to create more unskilled jobs and pay them more money. This only creates worthless positions that consume more resources than neccesary. A better idea would be to re-educate the workers to fill roles where job positions are open. Granted there aren't many positions open anywhere these days (except healthcare), but during the last booms we were constantly importing talent from overseas.



[Edited on April 8, 2010 at 9:26 PM. Reason : a]

4/8/2010 9:21:41 PM

Quote :

"Supermarkets and mines share mostly the same pool of unskilled workers."

Really? I'd imagine that mines employ mostly 20-40 yr old males. That group is very underrepresented among supermarket cashiers. The supermarkets I go to tend to employ the young or the elderly, neither of which are very represented among the mining workforce. So I think it's a fairly easy argument to make that the two groups employ rather exclusive labor from one another.

Quote :

"The current congress/administration's solution to this problem is simply to create more unskilled jobs and pay them more money."

[citation needed]

4/8/2010 11:09:31 PM

grocery stores are capable of employing people who are miners. They dont hire them because miners make more money mining than they would bagging groceries. Its not a skillset thing, its a money thing.

re: spending, look at what jobs they've been focused on creating. Factory jobs, (temporary)infrastructure construction jobs, low wage jobs ($5000 comedy salary credit). bailouts of the failed auto makers and their unions of unskilled workers.

The also continue to focus on pushing everyone into traditional college, which is really pretty dumb. Demand for community colleges and vocational training has been increasing steadily for a while now and the fed hasn't really done anything to help (this is for the last probably 6 years or so). In addition, schools in poor locations continue to fail poor kids creating the lack of mobility that traps them in low paying jobs.

The fed needs to sack the fuck up and come back to these guys with some hardcore education reform. No child left behind was a good start, but they fucking dicked off and let the local schools define the testing criteria. It was the dumbest shit. You ended up with school testing horribly because they were bad bad school, but then in order to keep the fed from coming in and fixing the problem, they were allowed to change the tests to make it look like they weren't so shit.

The solution to the problem of economic mobility is not to give more money to unskilled labor or to create unskilled busywork, its to retrain those people to do something that has actual demand. Then when the mine owners go looking for workers, theres a much smaller pool. That gives the workers the ability to demand better conditions/wages, or better yet, to replace workers with automated systems removing the dangers all together.

4/8/2010 11:35:32 PM

Quote :

"grocery stores are capable of employing people who are miners. They dont hire them because miners make more money mining than they would bagging groceries. Its not a skillset thing, its a money thing."

You could say the same thing about professional athletes or doctors. Ive already pointed out that the two tend to mostly be mutually exclusive.

Quote :

"look at what jobs they've been focused on creating. Factory jobs, (temporary)infrastructure construction jobs, low wage jobs ($5000 comedy salary credit). bailouts of the failed auto makers and their unions of unskilled workers."

Those are the only ones they can easily create, they're also the cheapest to make. It's not as if they can make more CEOs.

Quote :

"he also continue to focus on pushing everyone into traditional college, which is really pretty dumb. Demand for community colleges and vocational training has been increasing steadily for a while now and the fed hasn't really done anything to help"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124753606193236373.html

4/8/2010 11:43:41 PM

Quote :

"You could say the same thing about professional athletes or doctors. Ive already pointed out that the two tend to mostly be mutually exclusive. "

what? The skillsets for athletes or doctors are nothing alike. The required skillset for miners is has working limbs, can use a shovel. The required skillset for a grocery bagger is, has working limbs, can use a bag. I know you're not a retard so maybe im not being clear. In the venn diagram of people who are capable of coal mining in a weeks training and people who are capable of bagging groceries in a weeks training, the overlap is probably about 80%(100% of miners could be grocery baggers, 80% of those capable of grocery bagging could be miners). Whereas the overlap for people who can be professional athletes and people who can be doctors is probably something like 2%.

Grocery stores and mines compete for a large ammount of the same workforce. The reason mines have more workers in the 20-40 range is because mining pays better. Not because grocery stores dont want to hire people in that range.

Quote :

"Those are the only ones they can easily create, they're also the cheapest to make. It's not as if they can make more CEOs."

Theres no reason to create them. What they should be doing is either getting the banks they bailed out to start lending again, or helping newer lenders (microloans/credit unions) get more popular. Then businesses will create the jobs they need rather than the government creating jobs there was no demand for.

In the meantime

Quote :

"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124753606193236373.html"

is a good start. Dont bother creating busywork jobs, and instead put those unskilled workers into programs to get retrained for work that is in demand. If the government gets lending back up and running again by the time the workers get out of school there will be jobs available. What were probably going to see, is that we'll create more busy work jobs, the economy will slowly get better, and the banks will start lending very slowly. By the time the economy is back into full swing, those unskilled workers will remain unskilled and we will start importing talent again.

4/8/2010 11:59:41 PM

Quote :

"what? The skillsets for athletes or doctors are nothing alike. "

You misunderstood me, I was reffering to the statement "grocery stores are capable of employing people who are miners"

Quote :

"I know you're not a retard so maybe im not being clear."

I know what you're saying, and I've already disproven it. The average miner is a 30 year old male. The average grocery cashier is a 17 year old high school student or a 67 year old retiree.

Quote :

"The reason mines have more workers in the 20-40 range is because mining pays better. Not because grocery stores dont want to hire people in that range."

Are you seriously not getting this? Why do you think hospitals have so many well educated people? Because they PAY BETTER DUH. You could say that grocery stores compete with doctors because doctors could be cashiers, but you can obviously see why that is so stupid. Now take that same concept and apply it to miners.

I can't believe I'm having to explain labor markets. Miners may not be be educated, but they have a skill that causes them to compete in a different markets.

Quote :

"What they should be doing is either getting the banks they bailed out to start lending again, or helping newer lenders (microloans/credit unions) get more popular."

I wouldn't support artificially expanding credit too much, hate to overshoot things.

Quote :

"is a good start"

I wish you would look into this a bit more before assuming you know what the government is doing and why it is wrong. You're not the first guy to know the parable of the broken window, Obama's economic advisors know it, and they are trying to do the right thing, consider the possibility that they might be at least as smart as you.

4/9/2010 12:44:16 AM

Quote :

"You're not the first guy to know the parable of the broken window, Obama's economic advisors know it, and they are trying to do the right thing, consider the possibility that they might be at least as smart as you."

I would suspect that Obama's economic advisors are more interested with the public's perception of Obama's economic policies than with actual long-term economic health. If the majority of the public is not aware of the broken window fallacy, then why wouldn't they use this to their advantage by promising growth by implementing policies that in the short term may appear wonderful but in the long term actually have a negative affect? That's politics. Manipulate the economy (and the numbers) to create some sense of recovery in the short term, and leave the bigger problems to the next administration to deal with.

4/9/2010 10:22:36 AM

^^ Kris, why? Are you that afraid of ever being wrong? Are you seriously suggesting that if a 30 year old white male walked into a grocery store, they would turn him away? Shaggy is absolutely correct. 100% of miners COULD work at the grocery store, they choose not to. 80% of those working at the grocery store COULD be miners, they choose not to. Why is everyone making this decision? Because these groups have good reasons for acting differently: teenagers living with their parents destined for college refuse to be miners, and some people have physical handicaps making them bad miners (cannot lift 60 pounds), and 30 year old white men willing to be miners can move away.

So we have workers that are trapped in the local market, namely 17 year old teenagers unwilling to be miners, so we have a disconnect in supply/demand in that market, driving down wages. Even that is not a monopsony, because there are far more than one possible employer for a 17 year old, but there is only so much work for such workers at the current minimum wage, while the local population has a strong tendency towards population growth, meaning lots of 17 year olds living with their parents and looking for work. Fixed deflated demand, high supply, means minimum wage wherever they go and high unemployment.

But 30 year old white males don't live with their parents, they can leave, and would if they were not compensated. And the demand for miners is flexible: if the supply of workers willing to be miners grows, wages fall, some miners move away, and local mines become more competitive against mines in other regions, driving up demand for their coal and creating more mining positions, increasing wages to their natural level. Reactive demand, reactive supply, means high wages.

There is no monopsony to be found in the hills of WV, although legislation induced suffering is common among teenagers, particularly among minorities.

4/9/2010 11:04:05 AM

Quote :

"I know what you're saying, and I've already disproven it. The average miner is a 30 year old male. The average grocery cashier is a 17 year old high school student or a 67 year old retiree."

You haven;t disproven it. You've only proven my point that miners choose mining over grocery stores because they make more money, despite there being no difference in skill requirement.

Quote :

"Are you seriously not getting this? Why do you think hospitals have so many well educated people? Because they PAY BETTER DUH. You could say that grocery stores compete with doctors because doctors could be cashiers, but you can obviously see why that is so stupid. Now take that same concept and apply it to miners."

Its not stupid because Doctors require years of training and lots of investment before than can work at a hospital. There is no requirement for someone to become a miner or a grocer. Thats why its called unskilled labor. Obviously doctors could be miners or grocers, but they dont because they posess the skills to make more money.

Miners and Grocers, on the other hand, posess the skills to do each others jobs (except for the elderly or those forbidden to work in mines by the government). Most miners and grocers are interchangable, thus grocery stores compete with mines for labor. Again, the reason grocers dont have as many 18-40 year olds is because they miners make more money mining than they can as a grocer with no change in their required skills.

Quote :

"I wouldn't support artificially expanding credit too much, hate to overshoot things. "

Right now is aritificially low thanks to the fed screwing up the banking sector. Even if they dont do anything regarding lending, they should still move forward with retraining efforts.

Quote :

"I wish you would look into this a bit more before assuming you know what the government is doing and why it is wrong. You're not the first guy to know the parable of the broken window, Obama's economic advisors know it, and they are trying to do the right thing, consider the possibility that they might be at least as smart as you."

Its a hard thing for me to consider because the majority of what comes out of the administration and congress is half-assed bullshit, bailouts, or other payoffs to special interests. They are also hell bent on promoting these bad ideas (see supplanter's posts), and we end up talking about them instead of good ideas like the community college stuff.

4/9/2010 11:12:03 AM

If coal mining is such a great occupation (paywise) as lonesnark contends, why is it then that coal counties are typically the most economically distresed counties in America

4/9/2010 3:31:56 PM

God, Kentucky fucking sucks.

4/9/2010 3:34:16 PM

Like I told Kris, according to BLS coal miners earn more than the average american worker (something like 20%). But they earn perhaps twice as much as their neighbors, which for whatever reason are unwilling to be coal miners.

It seems to me, the regions in question are low income, that mines exist there is a coincidence.

4/9/2010 6:08:56 PM

Compare these coal mining counties to their non-coal mining county neighbors and the picture is still grim for coal miners. Traditionally, the non-coal mining communities do not suffer the same economic distress as coal mining communities.

4/9/2010 6:17:15 PM

Quote :

"I would suspect that Obama's economic advisors are more interested with the public's perception of Obama's economic policies than with actual long-term economic health."

I would suspect that those two are not mutually exclusive.

Quote :

"Are you seriously suggesting that if a 30 year old white male walked into a grocery store, they would turn him away?"

They wouldn't. They also wouldn't turn someone with a doctorate degree away. The point is that grocery stores don't compete for skilled mining labor just like they don't compete with highly educated labor.

Your argument is something like this: There is a monopoly on olive oil. You say, there cannot be a monopoly on olive oil, people could use vegetable oil or sesame oil. Whether or not there are other similar markets is irrelevant to the existence of a monopoly on a given market.

Skilled labor tends to face monopsony, this is well known, this is why we saw such horrible conditions and low wages in these industries in the past, that's why we started having labor unions.

Quote :

"despite there being no difference in skill requirement"

There is a difference, thus why the young and elderly cannot work there.

Quote :

"Thats why its called unskilled labor"

Miners are not unskilled labor.

Quote :

"Most miners and grocers are interchangable, thus grocery stores compete with mines for labor."

But those are separate labor markets, thus there is the opportunity for monopsony. Monopsony will not only depress prices below the market price in the market it is in, it will also depress the price in adjacent markets.

Quote :

"Right now is aritificially low thanks to the fed screwing up the banking sector."

You just suggested we lower it even more and encourage banks to make loans. In order to do that, we'd effectively have to pay banks to loan money, which is very stupid and dangerous.

Quote :

"Its a hard thing for me to consider because the majority of what comes out of the administration and congress is half-assed bullshit, bailouts, or other payoffs to special interests."

That's the shit that makes news. If you start following it a bit closer and not just what makes headlines, you will be able to judge it a bit fairer.

4/9/2010 6:20:17 PM