“decline in coal employment between 1950 and the 2000s, from half a million miners to around 80,000” even as coal production remained stable

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/fossil-fuels-and-fossilized-minds

The collapse of rural America has been so extreme, and the implications so grim, that nobody in leadership was willing to talk about it. That was a colossal failure.

Coal decline was automation and technique. Those jobs aren’t coming back. The people and communities are zombie shells.