Green Jobs Myths

by Don Boudreaux on April 10, 2009

in Environment, Myths and Fallacies

"Green jobs" promise a black-and-blue future.

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{ 6 comments }

Mark April 10, 2009 at 10:15 am

Green jobs already have a black and blue present.

Cynically, I am part of that present.

vidyohs April 10, 2009 at 11:39 am

I know it is not good form to be redundant but things like this article on green jobs just make my head ache.

It is frightening to know that there are people out there who have an ignorance so deep, so wide, and so profound that they will fall for this Sh.t.

Sam Grove April 10, 2009 at 12:02 pm

But vidyohs, labels work.

Didn't you know that you can define reality with the right label?

We shall create jobs and, by calling them "green" they shall be good. So sayeth the
vote, so sayeth the political gentry.

And the people rode mass transit into the sea of debt. And they called it "good".

Crawdad April 10, 2009 at 2:55 pm

Came across this at mises.org. The original article was from The Economist. The link is below the quote.

"Gabriel Calzada Álvarez, a professor at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid, has tried to use empirical data to estimate how Spain's subsidies for renewables, which so impressed Mr Obama, will affect employment. He calculates that the subsidies for existing renewable-electricity plants, which the government has promised to pay for 25 years, will cost €29 billion. Those subsidies, in turn, have created 50,200 jobs, according to data from the European Commission. That equates to a subsidy of over €570,000 per job. … Spain's private sector, on the other hand, creates a job for every €260,000 or so invested, by Mr Calzada's reckoning. So if the government had left the €29 billion in the hands of the private sector, it would have created 113,000 jobs with it–2.2 times as many. In other words, the government, Mr Calzada finds, is destroying 2.2 ordinary jobs for every green one it creates."

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13404568

vidyohs April 10, 2009 at 8:16 pm

Heard about that, Sam, but thought it was just a rumor.

vidyohs April 10, 2009 at 8:16 pm

Good stuff Crawdad, thanks.

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