Even Freed from Regulations, Don't Expect Coal Jobs To Return. Or Factory Jobs, Either.

[EasyAce]

Some industries die natural deaths and Donald Trump and others shouldn't try to change that.
By Nick Gillespie
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/08/even-freed-from-regulations-dont-expect/print

Two hallmarks of President Donald Trump's plans to revive the economy are lifting regulations on coalmining and forcing
companies to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States via protectionist policies. Neither is likely to work, for related reasons.

Consider coal first. The Baker Institute writes at Forbes:

Government regulations have very little to do with coal's problems. Repealing the
CPP [Clean Power Plan, a regulation passed by President Obama] or opening federal
lands to mining won't rescue King Coal from the drubbing it is receiving at the hands
of cheaper, cleaner natural gas and wind power....

The challenge is as Sisyphean as it is undesirable. His plan represents a broadside against
the market and climate forces that have made great strides in modernizing American power
generation. Even Trump's stated grounds for his avowed goal, employment, would most
likely be undermined by his intervention....

As my colleagues demonstrate, short of an improbable event that sends natural gas prices
soaring, there is little chance of a coal renaissance in America. That's a good thing, for
plenty of reasons.

Natural gas and other forms of energy are more efficient and create less pollution. Coal mining employed just 66,000 in 2015, while newer
methods of energy extraction, such as shale gas, employ more people. So anything that Trump does to stoke demand for coal in the current
climate will have counterproductive impacts.

When it comes to manufacturing, Trump (along with many other politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders) similarly overpromises.
Manufacturing jobs—factory work, essentially—has been declining as a share of employment since 1943.



The red line, which runs left to right and captures the percentage of factory workers as a percentage of total employment, shows a straight-line
decline from the 1940s until the 2010s, when it flattens out around 8 percent as it slowly approaches zero percent. Apart from relatively small
artisanal manufacturing shops scattered around America, there is no reason to expect a large reversal in a trend that has been
in place for around 70 years. Trump and other "economic nationalists" may well try to bully, tax, and otherwise discourage companies
from moving jobs overseas, but the jobs saved will be rounding errors and simply forestall whatever developments might actually jack up the
economy for real.

Consider for instance the effects of occupational licensing rules and other certifications that create barriers to entry for new businessess,
operators, and services. For all his talk about cutting regulations, Trump has had little to say about sharing economy ventures such as Uber
or Lyft. Given his interests in conventional hoteling, I assume he is not predisposed toward Airbnb and other house-sharing services. But
those are the sorts of come-from-nowhere services and companies the squeeze jobs and value out of otherwise dead assets.

Economies function more efficiently when the actors in them—consumers and producers alike—are generally free to act how they want.
Vested interests will always be trying to screw over competitors and customers so they can maintain or grow their market share. One of the
things I like about Trump is his willingness to talk about deregulating vast aspects of the economy. Unfortunately, his deregulatory zeal
seems to be less about creating a wide-open economy that is characterized by creative destruction which "incessantly
revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one" and more about
reviving some preferred industry from the past.

Unless we really get lucky, deregulation informed by nostalgia isn't going to create a vibrant future.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Coal is nasty, nasty stuff even without the hysteria against global warming. I read that coal power plants put more radiation in the air in surrounding communities than even nuclear power plants.


In some urban areas in the world, especially those with a heavy usage of coal, just breathing the air has the effect of smoking a few packs of cigs.

[thackney]

Government regulations have very little to do with coal's problems. Repealing the
CPP [Clean Power Plan, a regulation passed by President Obama] or opening federal
lands to mining won't rescue King Coal from the drubbing it is receiving at the hands
of cheaper, cleaner natural gas and wind power....

That is laugh.  It is cheaper than Natural Gas only when government regulations artificially make coal use more expensive.  And wind is currently only "cheaper" with government subsidy.

[thackney]

I read that coal power plants put more radiation in the air in surrounding communities than even nuclear power plants.

Eating one banana deliveries more radiation to a human body than living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant for a year.

Going into your basement deliveries more radiation than a coal or a nuclear plant.  You are talking about weighing micrograms of dust and complaining about the added weight.