Why investing in coal companies may not help the people living in coal country

When we subsidize coal companies, does that make it back to the people living in coal country? In her reporting for Quartz, economics writer Gwynn Guilford found that the answer may be a loud, resounding “no.” For her article “The 100-year capitalist experiment that keeps Appalachia poor, sick, and stuck on coal,” Guilford reported on the coal mining region of Central Appalachia, near the Kentucky-West Virginia border. She found that specializing only in coal had left the region without many other economic opportunities. 

“You talk to people in Central Appalachia, and they call it a mono-economy. Or a mono-culture,” said Guilford in an interview with Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal. “Verbatim.”

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