And yet if Wyoming wanted to grow its economy, they could add more ski resorts, winter sports facilities, hotels, and other tourist related businesses. They are doubling down on the wrong ideas.
On a personal note, I've always been troubled by the over-representation of unnecessary services and useless gadgets in the US economy. Luxury ski resorts and $400 cookie baking devices (with connected smartphone app) are not noble products, and they demoralize the workers who provide/build them.
I know this might not be a popular sentiment to those on HN who Uber home from their San Francisco office to pick up their Blue Apron delivery and pre-order their new iDevice, but there it is.
That said, coal and fracking seem like a bad idea for Wyoming's future. It has plenty of wind and empty land.
The value of their time is determined by the market, whether and how in demand their skills are. They can make themselves amenable to whatever other career options are available, or else make themselves amenable to starve waiting for the resurgence of a dying industry.
The days of lifetime employment in a single career are rapidly coming to an end - globalism and automation are constantly reducing the value of employment in many professions, or making human employment obsolete. Those industries which haven't been gutted by these trends yet will be, inevitably. Nearly everyone is going to have to learn to take what little they can get when they can get it, in time.
And instead of pandering to blue collar workers, Republicans should actually be trying to help them prepare for the future, rather than yearn for the past. But they can't, because what would help would be subsidizing education and healthcare to reduce the crippling burdens of debt on the lower and middle class and make it easier for people to find other jobs, and possibly institute some sort of basic income so that a lack of employment won't be devastating, as lack of employment becomes the norm for more and more people.
mining coal on the other hand -- a truly noble pursuit. "A lump of coal placed in a cart embiggens the smallest man ..."
Mining is a horrible business and worse job. If people are fighting for that, they have no options.
Disclaimer: I propose making up the difference with social benefits. "Basic income lite" if you will until society can catch up with the fact that your job and income does not define you.
Most of the state is flat and dry.