What, exactly, is the price of a miner's penance? How much must a miner pay to cover the shame of being an American miner? (Let us leave alone for a moment the question of why an American miner should be made to feel ashamed of being an American miner by the United Snakes Government.) We have a working number and you should be sitting down for this. The United Snakes government's shame price, the price which an American miner must pay to ensure that he will not be further persecuted for producing metals that for millennia have been used as honest money, and additionally metals which enable cell-phones, Volvos and Prius cars, refrigerators, is: Seven hundred and thirty-one thousand and 667 dollars and some change -- $731,666.66 to be precise. Per miner. Per Lucky Friday miner at Hecla's operations in northern Idaho. All in, $263.4 million: two-hundred sixty-three point four million dollars/David Bond, Wallace Street Journal. More here.

Question: Is the mining industry being punished too much for providing us with the metals which enable cell-phones, Volvos and Prius cars, refrigerators?