Green Jobs. A National Scandal?, Part IV
At National Review Online on Friday, Deroy Murdock writes that with more bankruptcies to come, so-called green jobs are a national scandal. Moreover, it goes beyond the $500 million government “loan” to Solyndra. Murdock lists over a half-dozen “green bankrupcies” that involve taxpayers money.
We’ve growled about these so-called “green” jobs several times recently -- September 19, September 24, and October 7, 2011.
At Master Resource last week, the authors of a report, The Dirty Secret Behind Clean Jobs (requires Adobe), summarize the results of their report for the Cascade Policy Institute. According to Sibilla and Wynn, not only is the definition of “green jobs,” but the “green job subsidies are based on flawed economic principles.” They also say the “assumptions for job growth are inaccurate or downright false.” Their conclusion:
“Clean jobs have a dirty secret: They will not put Americans back to work. And they leave Americans as consumers and taxpayers poorer. Timeless economics and current facts (think Solyndra) reach the same verdict.”
While at Master Resource, a search for “green job” will get you more details. And at the Heritage Foundation’s blog, The Foundry, September 30, 2011, there’s an interesting discussion of the warning’s on “green jobs” made by the top economic advisers in the White House. An article at Canada Free Press concludes with:
“It would be far more honest for green-job supporters to say that they are not increasing overall employment but just creating what in their minds are “right” jobs in the place of “wrong” ones. That would replace a half-truth with a fuller truth.
"But are so-called green energy jobs really right when consumers continually chose oil, gas, and coal? This issue is a separate one, but its answer cements the case against government picking energy winners and losers in a free society.”
Finally, Brad Plummer has an interesting chart at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog that shows “the top 15 job sectors of green job growth.”
But, as Sibilla and Wynn comment, who knew transit workers labored in a green industry, or that bureaucrats responsible for regulation and compliance were green workers. Sheesh!
UPDATE (10/20/11): Tait Trussell has an article at Front Page Magazine today that includes quotations from Sen. Charles Grassley's letters to DoL Secretary Hilda Solis and several working definitions from Vice-President Biden's Middle Class Task Force.