Back in February, a few days after U.S. Steel broke ground on its $3 billion facility in Osceola, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation that moved a $3 billion NFL stadium closer to fruition.
The similar dollar amount serves to showcase the vast difference between the two projects, and their cultural and economic implications.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of steel as a foundational component to, well, almost everything.
Try to imagine a world without it, and vast aspects of life as we know it would vanish. Cars and trucks are mostly steel; so are trains. Modern buildings, including schools, hospitals and manufacturing facilities, require steel. Computers, phones and the entire telecommunications network apparatus is steel-dependent, as are most utilities. Agriculture is a steel-saturated industry, the armed services even more so. Steel is integral to clocks, appliances, utensils, keys, cans, plumbing fixtures, even bedsprings.
A day without steel would