The idea that 55-year-olds who have spent their lives in a very localized highly specialized profession should just take a few classes and then go move somewhere else for a new lucrative career is just... nuts. It's been nuts for decades. It was nuts when "job retraining" was supposed to make the NAFTA medicine go down. It's especially nuts when "tech" is a field known for elitism and age discrimination.
There aren't many coal miners so the focus on them is a weird fetish, but to the extent that "coal miners" is a metaphor, it's one for people who had hard jobs that went away and no amount of job retraining can reset their lives.
