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Comment by mullen | Hacker News Reader

Clinton did. She had a jobs retraining program that would have addressed people in industries that were in decline or going away. Ironically, the very people who would benefit from this program mostly vote for Trump and he is not going to do anything for them.

Automation is coming for these people's jobs and there is nothing that can be done about that. Retraining is the only hope for these people but they have to stop acting entitled and start voting for people who will help them get retrained.

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Retraining for what? Another comment mentioned FDR and infrastructure projects, but this isn't the 1930's. Even if there were a massive infrastructure project, that's good for at most 5-10 years of employment, and then what?

Retraining we can do. However, we can't create massive new job sectors to hire those retrained workers, unless it's make-work government jobs (in which case we'd be better off paying those people a basic income and not removing value from government services by making them more complex and bureaucratic than they need to be).

why can't they be trained to do jobs that might be considered white collar? how about training them to the job of a CEO, or heavens forbid, invest in them to become entrepreneurs?

I think rural America needs more than retraining programs, though you're correct that Donald Trump has made no mention of what he's actually going to do for coal workers.

They need new and dynamic industries that treat the employees with respect and agency. Something entire communities can benefit from.

> Donald Trump has made no mention of what he's actually going to do for coal workers.

He apparently plans to revive the coal industry by repealing environmental regulations and to put them back to work mining coal[0,1].

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/coal-jobs-trump-...

[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-27/trump...

Forgive me for saying so, but I don't believe that's much of a realistic plan. Which to me is no plan at all.

It's not even remotely realistic, it's a populist fantasy.

Nevertheless, that is the plan, to somehow force the world to turn the clock back on globalism to a time when American coal, steel and auto workers were relevant, and to beat back the tide of modernity until the world makes sense again.

Do we have any good examples of mass retraining programs working well?

I'm not aware of good data either way so it seems something that would be sensible to try at least for some time to collect data on it. You need something to get the workers able to do other jobs because protecting all the current jobs is unreasonable.

Yes, the make-work programs by FDR. The Civilian Conservation Corps worked very well. In the US, considering the infrastructure maintenance / replacement needs, starting up something similar strikes me as with a lot of potential.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps

That was a different era, where physical labor was still valued and needed.

You've got to be kidding, right? Have you seen the reports about roads, buildings, and facilities? They've been financially and physically neglected since the early 1980s. The US needs physical labor more than ever - AND - US needs a drastic re-allocation of Capital from Investors to Poor People Who Spend if we ever want to fix this broken dang structure. The US needs to over-pay for much needed fixes and the rising tide will lift all boats, except the big goddamn yachts of the .01% but whatever they can afford it.

Would you count the G.I. Bill? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill

To a point, but the bigger problem for military people entering the workforce is getting civilian certifications for things they have been doing for years. I really wish, in addition to drastically improving the VA, the country would put together a formal "after service" program to help people deal with becoming a civilian. One part that would be helpful is to work with state vocational and certification to translate the military experience into immediate certifications without starting over.

The G.I. Bill is very good for military professions that don't have a common civilian analog and the person is going to start again anyway.

Retrain them to do what?

The best answer I've had wouldn't work without a big change in politics: we could use a ton of home health aides and other support for aging Boomers, not to mention classroom assistants (one of the best ways to boost academic performance) or daycare workers.

Spending on directly helping people seems like a very humane way to deal with shifts in employment but I don't see us choosing to invest that kind of money, not to mention the problem with attitudes complicating shifting a heavily-male worker surplus into traditionally female fields.

I don't think the 1% is going to be too keen on footing the bill for something like this.

Exactly the problem – it'd be a good way to deal with a rising worker surplus, just as e.g. the New Deal created a lot of not-strictly-necessary public works, but I don't know how we get here in the current political climate and its bitter crab-pot mentality.

Since the end of the great recession the US has been creating about 200k new jobs per month. BLS says there are about 2 million truckers in the US. That's 10 months of job growth. That's a lot but it's not as big of a deal as some people seem to think. Especially since automation will take over slowly over the course of quite some time.

You imply that there is no other work available for these people, and I think you are partially correct. But I would train them in small business skills so that they can recognize small business opportunities and find work for themselves. This coupled with the loosening of regulations that unnecessarily prohibits small business. That is a general statement, the details I do not know.

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