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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (20452)	6/3/2017 9:47:19 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 358079

>> Why is coal production down? It reached a peak in 2009 for the US and 2013 globally, and has been declining every year since. That should be no surprise to anyone. When you have a glut of natural gas, plus various renewables that are becoming more economically feasible, of course you would have a slow transition to utilizing those. They are expensive, but everyone recognizes that eventually the cost will come down. In many cases, the federal government has insanely subsidized some of those alternatives. And of course, Obama did everything he could do to break the back of coal. I'm not sure why you think this is shocking? Markets will do these things over time. The point is that markets need to do it, not government. Because if facilities are not fully amortized prior to changing fuels, it makes the cost of electricity higher than it should be. This is an example of what Lane3 referred to last week as "Suboptimization". Some subgroup thinks it is okay to make "electricity prices skyrocket" but that does not mean it makes good economic sense. Taking the coal industry out of business is stupid. Markets need to decide when that happens, absent a compelling reason for regulators to intervene which does not exist. >> The coal miner vote is under the impression that Trump can wave a magic wand and bring back the industry of old. He can't. Economics won't let him. He won't bring it back to the status quo ante, however, production for the week ended 5/27 was 2.5 million short tons greater than the same week last year.