And, this is no joke. Republicans are the majority that can't read. The South is in third world status with a 10 percent or more illiteracy rate. This is all Republican territory.
If Republicans can't read, they can be mislead, demand no real proof for statements by their leadership NOR investigate on their own what reality actually reflects in the year 2019 or 2020. It is astounding to me that Mitch McConnell never seeks to end this victimization and chronically lies about the state of the coal industry.
Coal mining productivity in the United States increased 26% over the past five years, (click here) reaching 6.8 tons per miner hour in 2017, up from 5.4 tons per miner hour in 2012, according to EIA’s Annual Coal Report and data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Coal productivity ranges significantly across production regions, with productivity in the Powder River Basin far exceeding productivity in the Interior and Appalachian regions....
The increase is PER MINER. The miners have not gotten more work done, they always work hard. The mining process is automated more and more giving stockholders more money in their pocket. All that money glut at the beginning of 2017 made it easier to automate and close out jobs.
The average coal miner is 45 years old with a high school degree. About 75 percent have a high school diploma. They can make up to $80K per year. They have great unions. There are about 3 percent of American coal miners with a bachelor degree and absolutely none with advanced degrees. There are marginal numbers of women in coal jobs and there are no clear statistics about concern for their health being exposed to coal dust and methane leaks.
Without better education and/or job training outside of this industry, the coal miners will never see that kind of annual income, HOWEVER, their health will be remarkably better. Is there a price tag on health for these folks? And the Republicans would like to shut down Black Lung funds.
The average coal miner is 45 years old with a high school degree. About 75 percent have a high school diploma. They can make up to $80K per year. They have great unions. There are about 3 percent of American coal miners with a bachelor degree and absolutely none with advanced degrees. There are marginal numbers of women in coal jobs and there are no clear statistics about concern for their health being exposed to coal dust and methane leaks.
Without better education and/or job training outside of this industry, the coal miners will never see that kind of annual income, HOWEVER, their health will be remarkably better. Is there a price tag on health for these folks? And the Republicans would like to shut down Black Lung funds.
U.S. coal mining productivity has increased despite mine closings and decreasing employment and production. Technology and process improvements have contributed to the increase in productivity, but a larger factor is the distribution of productivity across mines. The mines that are first to close during market downturns are often the ones with higher production costs and lower productivity, while more productive mines remain operating, increasing overall productivity....
There are NO MORE NEW JOBS in the coal industry. (click here) The industry USED TO BE a great employer of Americans, today they employ less than 50,000 people across the spectrum of coal jobs. This is ridiculous and the USA needs to leave the old behind and move forward with clean, alternative energy.
COAL MINING IS A DEAD INDUSTRY FOR JOBS!
The Republicans that cannot read are victims of the cronies that give enormous amounts of money for their re-election. The Kochs. The Petroleum Industry. The Coal industry is not only proud of it's victimization, but, is not a viable industry anymore. END the fossil fuel industry subsidies. Enough of the victimization of America and the people that actually believe they know the truth about those they hate due to propaganda.
To truly understand the state of literacy in today’s United States, (click here) we need to go back to the beginning. Literacy has long been used as a method of social control and oppression. Throughout much of history, the ability to read was something only privileged, upper-class white men were allowed to learn. School wasn’t free like it is today. Education was provided to only a select few, and this preserved a class system that kept the poor powerless and the rich powerful—a practice, we’ll see later in this piece, that continues today....
...Alabama Slave Code of 1833 included this following law: “Any person who shall attempt to teach any free person of color, or slave, to spell, read or write, shall upon conviction thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum of not less than two hundred fifty dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars.”...'
...Frederick Douglass who learned the alphabet secretly as a child from his slave master’s wife, Sophia Auld. As a young adult, Douglass pursued learning on his own, secretly reading books and newspapers. He famously said that “once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”...
...Women, too, were largely left out of education. Educating women simply was not a priority until the early 1900s and even then, women attending college was rare up until the 1960s. Early Americans often believed it was a waste to educate women past the basics since they would need to run a home and raise a family. Bard College’s Joel Perlmann and Boston College’s Dennis Shirley say that “half the women born around 1730 were illiterate.” Women might have been taught to read at home or in an early girls’ school, but they largely weren’t taught to write, and often didn’t have access to secondary school in the early American colonies and states....
...While today’s American public schools are compulsory and free to attend, and we now have things like television and the internet, reading still remains a critical pathway to freedom....
One measure of a country's ability to build a middle class and consumerism that supports jobs is its literacy rate. If the country is illiterate, why make the investment unless it is simply dirt cheap labor one is looking for.
...On the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress 12th Grade Reading Level Assessment (2015), 46 percent of white students scored at or above proficient. Just 17 percent of black students and 25 percent of Latino students scored proficient. Females scored higher than males. In McKinsey & Company’s The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools, “Black and Latino students are roughly two to three years of learning behind White students of the same age.” McKinsey’s research showed that that the achievement gap can lead to “heavy and often tragic consequences, via lower earnings, poorer health and higher rates of incarceration.” This achievement gap becomes an opportunity gap, an economic gap, and a racial gap, which gets passed on generation to generation unless it’s disrupted....
