Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Green jobs are bad economics: "hiring more people to produce less energy is not a strategy for prosperity"

‘Green' jobs: Shrewd PR, bad economics - The Globe and Mail
Pointing to jobs ‘created’ to fix these problems is an error that Frédéric Bastiat identified in his ‘parable of the broken window’. Broken windows generate work for glaziers, but that doesn’t mean that breaking windows will increase national income.

An often-quoted statistic goes something like this: “wind energy produces 27 per cent more jobs per kilowatt hour than coal plants and 66 per cent more jobs than natural gas plants”. This could well be true, but it is hardly a strong argument in favour of the employment opportunities that would be generated by investing in wind energy: hiring more people to produce less energy is not a strategy for prosperity.
Flashback: Obama promised 5 million new green collar jobs, Duke shows us the way | TG Daily
Obama proposed creating 5 million new jobs in the environmental industries.

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