Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang took aim at one of his rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, after the 2020 front-runner suggested that displaced coal miners should learn to code.
On Wednesday, without saying his name, the tech businessman took a clear swipe at the Democrat juggernaut.
"Let them do the kind of work they actually want to do, instead of saying to a group of people that you all need to become coders. Like, what is that about?" Yang said at a campaign event in New Hampshire. "You know, maybe Americans don’t all want to learn how to code.”
At a recent campaign event, Biden spoke about coal mining jobs that are in peril in his home state of Pennsylvania, and how American workers may have to evolve their skill sets in order to survive in a modern economy.
"I come from a family and an area where it's coal mining in Scranton," Biden told the crowd. "Anybody who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine sure as hell can learn to program, as well, but we don't think of it that way."
He later added: "My liberal friends were saying, 'You can't expect them to be able to do that.' Give me a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God's sake."
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At a recent Democrat primary debate, Biden faced criticism over his willingness to displace potentially "hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers" in order to pursue "a greener economy."
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"Three consecutive presidents have enjoyed stints of economic growth due to a boom in oil and natural gas production. As president, would you be willing to sacrifice some of that growth even knowing that it potentially could displace thousands, maybe hundreds [of thousands] of blue-collar workers in the interest of transitioning to that greener economy?" Politico reporter Tim Alberta asked.
"The answer is yes," Biden had responded.
Toad32 on January 4th, 2020 at 12:30 UTC »
Half the incoming students to my university who take the first level Java class fail. 50% failure rate. These are young students who chose this career path, fail, and then moved on to different majors because the first Java class is so hard.
Obviously they could make that class easier to learn and pass, but this is just an example.
Casemet on January 4th, 2020 at 05:28 UTC »
I’d like to see Biden learn to code.
become_taintless on January 4th, 2020 at 01:53 UTC »
I can tell you with certainty I work with at least 100 people who don't want to learn to change the defaults in Outlook, much less learn to code.