Will the Stimulus plan currently proposed by Congress actually create jobs? The short answer is no. The longer answer is the government cannot create jobs; the government can only transfer or redistribute jobs. As Heritage Senior Budget Analyst Brian Riedl says, “[B]efore the government can spend $1 billion hiring road builders and purchasing asphalt, it must first tax or borrow $1 billion from other sectors of the economy, which then lose a similar number of jobs.” Maybe if the money came from the Tooth Fairy or Santa, we’d have a …
President-elect Barack Obama is set to take command a week from today. One of the programs he’s been touting from the beginning of his campaign is a massive green jobs initiative. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Obama can kill two birds with one stone with green jobs; he can solve our environment and recession concerns. The bottom line, as economist Walter Williams puts it, is this: Where does Congress get the money to create the jobs?” They won’t get it from the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus; they must get the …
President-elect Barack Obama has asked the Democrat Congress to produce an economic stimulus bill that he can sign on his inauguration day. The price tag on this bill is already in the $500 billion to $1 trillion range, so it is going to be difficult to track all the boondoggle’s on it. But $15 billion of the stimulus behemoth will specifically be for Obama’s “green jobs” program, under which he has promised to spend $15 billion a year for the next ten years. Where is this “green” spending to go? …
It appears more and more likely with each passing day that we’ll wind up with an Obama administration. If Obama is elected, we will face a lengthy list of policy proposals that are supposed to help the less fortunate but in fact just kill economic growth. He would expand the welfare roles through tax credits to those who pay no taxes, restrict the freedom of employers to pay workers what they are worth, grant unions and government officials power over workers and business, and put government in the business of …
Bad energy policy usually involves repeating the mistakes made from 1970 to 1980 — windfall profits taxes, federally subsidized alternative energy sources, price controls, and others. All of these old ideas are back in play, even though their track record for worsening rather than solving the nation’s energy problems is there for all to see. But when it comes to the green jobs argument — that new federal energy and environmental requirements will create jobs and spur economic growth — we’re also repeating the blunders of another decade, the 1930s. …
Reason’s Jacob Sullum does a great job applying some good old fashioned common sense to ridiculous lefty claims about “green jobs“: Obama says he will “transform the challenge of global climate change into an opportunity to create 5 million new green jobs,” which he likens to the economic activity triggered by the personal computer. This way of looking at climate change is a variation on the broken window fallacy, according to which the loss caused by a smashed window is offset by the employment it gives the glazier. By the …
Green jobs. We always hear about them and how they’ll be created over the next few years. Presidential nominee Barack Obama vows to create 5 million of them. But as John Stossel eloquently explains, the government can’t really create jobs. They can shift resources and force investment to make it appear like they are creating jobs, but that’s about it. Stossel explains: Governments create no wealth. They only move it around while taking a cut for their trouble. So any jobs created over here come at the expense of jobs …
Writing at Real Clear Politics, John Stossel tackles a pet peeve of ours, ‘green jobs’: Politicians always promise that their programs will create jobs. It’s used to justify building palatial sports stadiums for wealthy team owners. Alaska Rep. Don Young claimed the infamous “bridge to nowhere” would create jobs. The fallacy is the same in every case: Even if the program creates jobs building bridges or windmills, it necessarily prevents other jobs from being created. This is because government spending merely diverts money from private projects to government projects. Governments …
