Hi OWG,
Thanks for your response:
That's exactly the kind of thinking that has kept WV where it is. We don't do that so we don't need that. In SC there is a department that actively travels around the globe to encourage and entice all kinds of businesses to set up shop in our state. Mining, logging, agriculture and tourism don't have to be the biggest businesses of the state. Coal mining is effectively dying and isn't likely to ever come back despite someone saying that they are going to bring it back. Utilities don't want to use coal in other areas of the country because the people there don't want coal produced electric. You can bring all the coal out of the ground that you want, but if there's no market for it, what do you do with it? Logging is still a very viable business and I would agree that it should be a large part of a state that is as forested as WV. I've honestly never considered WV much of an agricultural player. Sure, there are farms dotted about the state, but they aren't known for being a particularly large player in the agricultural industry that I'm aware of. Pretty much every state has a fairly vibrant tourism industry. Each state has parks and landmarks and natural beauty that makes it a place that people want to see on their vacations and such. However, even in this, WV pales in tourism compared to states like FL or CA or any of the coastal states.
So, my point, if those are the 'big' industries of WV, then WV needs to adjust its goals. It needs to put real effort into drawing in other industries and in order to do that it needs to be able to offer a fairly competent and skilled workforce. Yes, these are goals that will likely take years to bring to fruition and they have only themselves to blame that they have had the kind of thinking that you have for so long and thus rested upon their laurels and wasted decades of time and effort.
All we do is mining, logging, agriculture and tourism, so we don't need to create a skilled labor market.
SC fought hard for a Boeing plant that employs nearly 7,000 workers. We promised Boeing that we would have a skilled labor force for them to draw from. We worked to create the environment that Boeing wanted for the new facility. You see, SC suffered the same thing that WV is suffering. Millwork used to be the biggest industry in SC and then the majority of the mills shut down and we made a conscious effort to draw in new and different industries to employ as many of those unemployed that we can.
BMW moved into SC a number of years ago and they have been a great boon for our state economy because auto production generally fuels a lot of ancillary businesses. In my small city of Seneca we have a very large Borg Warner plant that makes major components for the BMW plant in Greenville. We have trucks running constantly from Seneca to Greenville with these parts. Clemson University even began a special automotive training program called Icar to interact with BMW and train workers to their specific requirements.
WV could do these same things...or they could be satisfied with who and what they are. A poor state with poor and uneducated people that will always be thus... because all they do is mining, logging, agriculture and tourism. They can spend countless hours of manpower to work to bring back an industry that is just going to die anyway, or they can look to the future and make the state a place where other businesses want to set up shop. It's the choice of the people of the state. No other state is going to do it for them.
God bless,
In Christ, ted