The Unseen Consequences of "Green Jobs"

For those of us that remember "way back" when we had a press that actually performed the job of investigative reporting, lies that were told by our elected officials somehow had a way of coming to the surface and biting them in the rear. Today, with the MSM in bed with the liberal/progressive/left, and full of pretty faces rather than true journalists, it is much harder for the average American to know what to and what not to believe.

Was watching the news this morning and found out that the statements, that Obama made about the proposed budget, that it would, in a few years bring revenues and spending in sync and everything would be "peaches and cream" thereafter, are somewhat less than true.

The problem was that he forgot to mention that his calculation omitted interest on the $14 billion of debt. This interest, that amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars each year would be added to the debt in a never ending cycle. So much for the "truth" from our elected politicians.

Now comes this article about the "Green Jobs" so highly touted by Obama in his State Of The Union address. It turns out that the majority of the jobs are temporary, ala the stimulus, and he failed to take into account the job losses caused by the diversion of funds, and the increased cost of energy. More harm than good? Probably.

Excerpt: A new report, "Defining, Measuring, and Predicting Green Jobs," by University of Texas economist Gurcan Gulen, issued by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, takes apart many studies predicting that policies mandating alternative energy production, energy efficiency, and conservation will create a boom in employment.

First, Gulen notes that many such studies fail to define clearly what they mean by green jobs. He points out that many pro-green jobs studies do not distinguish temporary construction jobs from more permanent operation jobs. Many studies also assume that green jobs will pay more than jobs in conventional energy production. But why would a construction job at a wind farm pay more than one at a conventional power plant?

Even more disturbingly, many green job studies have no analyses of job losses. Clean energy costs more than conventional energy, which means consumers and businesses will have less income with which to buy and invest. This reduces their consumption of other goods and services, resulting in job losses in those sectors—one of Bastiat's "unseen" effects. In addition, many studies simultaneously count on protectionist policies to exclude clean energy imports while assuming that domestic companies will be freely exporting to other countries.

Read full Reason.com article here.