[Beltalowda]

We could simply give the coal workers a sort of "pension".

40k people at $60k a year is $2.4 billion/year, which is a tiny fraction of the annual $4.8 trillion federal budget. You can structure parts of this in different ways outside of a blanket cheque, such as ways to incentivize starting businesses, credits for free education, or whatnot. It's still a lot of money, but the benefits are probably worth it, IMO. If $24 billion/year in student loan forgiveness is possible then I don't see why this isn't.

Politically it's a non-starter so I don't expect anything like this will happen. The GOP seems more concerned with simplistic "culture war" chest-beating and the Dems don't seem overly concerned with the plight of the working class and have their own style of simplistic culture war chest-beating (albeit less egregious).