Hacker News Reader

Comment by burnout1540 | Hacker News Reader

There are only about 45,000 coal miners in the entire US. That's a tiny number.

They're also in geographically low population areas so counting them and the people employeed in their towns they have a significant sway on some states and the Senate skews things towards low population states through it's inequitable representation AND the outsized power Senate rules give individual Senators.

Plus it's made a few people EXTREMELY rich so they've made their opinions and interests everyone elses problem too.

Every once in a while someone in the Netherlands argues for the district system and they are immediately shut down with "America".

One man one vote. And yes the regions that contribute more to the economy are a priority. They fund everything including the military without which we'd still be a part of Spain.

Yeah I get the idea originally, you had to appease the slave and smaller states to get them to join the plan originally at all, but there's a very, very good reason wherever the US has had the chance to design a new government we have never saddled them with our system. I don't think there's a reasonable hope that it'll get reformed in a clean way though.

There are approximately twice as many yoga instructors. It's unfortunate Big Yoga doesn't have the same political pull.

If people really cared about coal miners then they could be offered a $1 million redundancy package. It would amount to a tiny fraction of government spending and I'm pretty sure it would be welcomed.

More people drive buses in NYC than are coal miners in the whole America.

Probably though, like the buses, there's an order of magnitude more work done on the "back end". The machines, logistics, etc etc and everything else that depends on the industry. In the bus drivers example, it could be all the people in NYC who need to take a bus to get to work and would be affected by the sudden disappearance of buses. So it is with many industries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com