A recent story (http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/blog/sid.green-jobs) notes layoffs in the renewable energy business and laments the oft-heard call for expenditures on ‘green jobs’. The author notes the potential ‘explosion’ in clean jobs, but also the wasteful practice of low productivity investment. Solar power especially is very expensive and hardly a cost-effective way to spend taxpayer or consumer money.
Amazingly, a number of Congressional leaders such as Harry Reid and Bernie Sanders point to the struggles the public has had with higher energy costs, and then turn to renewable energy as a solution, without mentioning its (higher) cost. This is rather like Marie Antoinette’s supposed comment that the poor who had no bread should eat cake. Arguing for ‘clean’ energy over ‘dirty’ energy is one thing, but proposing to solve the problem of expensive energy with even more expensive (but ostensibly cleaner) energy is at best disingenuous.
[…] Green Jobs. What Would Marie Antoinette Do? — MasterResource A recent story (http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/blog/sid.green-jobs) notes layoffs in the renewable energy business and laments the oft-heard call for expenditures on ‘green jobs’. The author notes the potential ‘explosion’ in clean … MasterResource – http://masterresource.org/ […]
It’s entirely predictable. Every special interest in the U.S. (including our own special interests) will claim that their form of yummy bacon is “stimulus,” whatever the heck that means.It’s like global warming. Too hot? Global warming. Too cold? Global warming. Too wet? Global warming, etc. Until the economy collapsed, GW was the universal political solvent. Now it’s economic stimulus, aka political viagra.
I want to form an investment company called Shovels R Us, Inc., and, like the guys on Car Talk, guarantee a 50% return on investment. We guarantee that is you invest with us, we will return 50% of your investment. Show us the money.
Clean coal is preposterous, but so is “clean” any form of energy generation. “Green jobs” is another con job, up there with “the check is in the mail.” Jobs are jobs. If I don’t have one, I don’t give a damn whether the one I’m offered is “green.” Coal miners (God love them) have”green” jobs, only theirs are denominated in greenbacks.