————— WARNING..... SARCASM DEAD AHEAD —————
“U.S. should restart mining to end vulnerability”
Oh no..... That’s a terrible idea. I was told waaaaay back
in the 1990s that we don’t want these kinds of jobs.
They are not “value added” to our economy. Digging around in
the dirt IS NOT the kind of job that we should want our workforce to do.
I was told that we should instead let the Chinese do these “menial” jobs. Maybe we can hire a Chinese company to come over and actually dig the mine for us........ With Chinese
labor.
Then we won’t have to get our hands dirty........ because
Americans should not do jobs that are menial or dirty.
But the Chinese have no experience filling out all the environmental permits needed to get a mine started in the US. Of course the government could send them to school on our dime and teach them first. Then in 10 or 20 years we could get a mine on line in the US.
If you look around the US and South American mining industry right now, you’ll see that the PRC is buying shares in all manner of mines, and when they buy these major blocks of equity interest, they also negotiate prices and delivery amounts for the outputs of these mines.
In other words, Americans do the digging, the PRC gets the metal and a chunk of the profits.