Though it’s great for the economy to have low unemployment, one can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be wiser to add some 70,000 to the unemployment ranks by shutting down the coal mines completely. But wait: some forty percent of our energy needs is supplied by coal. Would it not be better to develop a robotic system for the most lethal pockets of the mines to spare the practice of humans having to dig in an environment of deadly gases? But then the cry — as it is in opposing environmental idealists — would be inordinate costs thereby raising the price of coal and rendering it non-competitive. So nothing will be done about it.

After all, there are many dangerous jobs such as, astronauts, firefighters, skyscraper builders and window washers, power line splicers, offshore drillers. We accept them matter-of-factly, just as we do our fighting men in Iraq along with less dangerous unskilled jobs — as long as our kids are in college, hoping to avoid those tough jobs in their future.