Comments by "Geoff Lepper" (@geofflepper3207) on "Wendover Productions" channel.

@ellisrivin2553 Thermal coal no longer makes economic sense - it just cannot compete anymore. So demand for it in the United States is going to disappear in about ten years and that has nothing to do with environmentalism or political views. For West Virginia to say "Well, we don't care if there is no longer any market for our coal. We're going to keep producing it anyway" would make about as much sense as a place continuing to produce vast numbers of buggy whips after demand had collapsed a century ago. Yes, of course there is a major concern regarding what coal miners and communities will do to earn money after thermal coal is gone. And coal miners won't be the only workers with that problem. Hollywood actors and writers are learning that demand for their services may collapse due to AI and professors and many other people may soon find that AI has taken away most of their jobs.
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@garethbaus5471 Actually probably just ten years for West Virginia to find a new source of income because a serious economic study said that for economic reasons there will no longer be any thermal coal plants by 2033. Though there will still be coal produced to manufacture steel.
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@Chrysobubulle Toronto may be the most diverse city in the world with over half the population being born outside of Canada and with immigrants coming from all over the world and with greater Toronto possibly the fastest growing population of any American or Canadian city. Haven't noticed the chaos you are talking about. In fact once again the recent cranes index for North American cities showed more highrises currently under construction in Toronto than in the next 13 major North American cities combined - hardly an indication of chaos. When exactly do you claim the chaos is going to occur?
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@markuskoarmani1364 I think that it would be beneficial to the United States if Mexico became a rich country. Canada is a rich country and doesn't pose a threat to the United States. I think that more Americans are afraid of a relatively poor Mexico than a rich Mexico because workers, businesses and communities fear that business will move from the United States to Mexico where wage rates are lower. Although we have seen the rise of east Asia in recent decades and can see economies in places like India and Indonesia growing I think that in decades to come the Canada/U.S./Mexico free trade zone will continue to be very successful and powerful and due to having significant population growth while East Asia suffers demographic decline North America will gain in economic and political power relative to East Asia.
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I'm imagining a new Batman movie in which Gotham City has replaced fireworks celebrations with drone displays. The drones behave properly at first and create pretty images of bunny rabbits and such things but because the company running the drone show is actually a front for a super criminal the drones then start creating threatening messages and displays including one that is a symbol of the super criminal before the drones descend to attack the city. Yikes. I don't even like Batman movies.
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@ChuckThree According to one source in a ranking of American cities for the cost of real estate LA is number 2 and San Francisco is number 3. That means that a lot of people are willing to pay a heck of a lot of money to buy a house in California when they could get the same sort of house for much less money in other states. And they certainly wouldn't do that if they thought that California is bleak. The most expensive cities in the United States are the ones that most people think are the best cities to live in. If San Francisco really was a complete disaster then nobody would want to live there so they wouldn't want to buy a house there and it would have some of the cheapest real estate in the country. So you may think that California is bleak but a lot of people don't think so.
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Think of how property prices collapse in a town in which half the people move away leaving half the homes in town vacant. That to some extent may be what happens to property markets in China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea over the rest of the century. It won't be as bad as the situation in which a mine or mill closes down and half the population leaves at once as the transition in East Asia will take decades and in that time some housing stock will deteriorate and be torn down but still having one's main investment in a home in a country in which the population is steadily declining and the number of young people finishing school and wanting to buy a home is rapidly declining is not a very good long term investment.
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@2x2is22 Actually a serious economic analytical firm said that by 2033 (just 10 years from now) there will no longer be any coal produced in the United States to be burned to create energy. And other serious economic analysis has shown that it makes no economic sense to build any new coal plants and that it already makes economic sense to close down the vast majority of current coal plants. These conclusions are not about saving the environment or pursuing a "left wing" agenda. They are based on the simple fact that economically thermal coal no longer makes sense and can't compete with cheaper alternatives such as gas and solar. Trying to pursue his right wing agenda Trump said that he would bring back jobs in the coal industry but while he was president the number of coal miners continued to dramatically decline because the market says thermal coal just doesn't make sense any more and even when coal is produced it makes economic sense to have more machines and fewer workers. And solar will continue to decrease in cost while gas will continue to be cheaper than coal. I think it's horrible that a lot of ex coal miners are out of work with few job prospects and that their former employers sometimes played games with their pensions and sick benefits and left environmental disasters for poor impoverished communities to deal with but thermal coal still no longer makes economic sense. Governments should be helping out ex coal miners and should be changing laws so that big companies can no longer reap huge profits from mining and then just walk away and shirk their responsibilities regarding workers and the environment.
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@english-tudor I think that the primaries and party conventions are the big problem in the United States. Canada and Australia are huge countries of a size comparable to the United States but have reasonable, short election campaigns. It's true that the United States has a higher population and thus more big cities but still the main problem in the United States seems to be including primaries and party conventions as part of the election as those seem to stretch the length of presidential campaigns to close to two years.
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