Climate bill backers pick up jobs theme

Backers of climate-change legislation are making an extra push to link clean energy with job growth as the administration and congressional Democrats look for ways to lower unemployment. One group released a study on Thursday that found mandating more renewable energy use, a provision included in climate legislation in Congress, would create thousands of jobs. The study, conducted by Navigant Consulting for the Renewable Electricity Standard Alliance, said a renewable electricity standard (RES) that required 25 percent of electricity come from renewable sources like wind and solar power would create 274,000 jobs. The RES-Alliance is a group of businesses and trade groups in support of a renewable energy mandate...read more

COMMENT

If you can't sell it as an environmental scare, then sell it as a jobs creation program.

There's just one problem: government can't create jobs.

Daniel Mitchell writes in The Fallacy That Government Creates Jobs:

The theory of government-instigated job creation overlooks the loss of resources available to the productive sector of the economy. Frederic Bastiat, the great French economist (yes, there were admirable French economists, albeit all of them lived in the 1800s), is well known for many reasons, including his explanation of the "seen" and the "unseen." If the government decides to build a "Bridge to Nowhere," it is very easy to see the workers who are employed on that project. This is the "seen." But what is less obvious is that the resources to build that bridge are taken from the private sector and thus are no longer available for other uses. This is the "unseen."

And if they are government jobs, Allen Reynolds writes in Governments Can't Create Jobs :

The fact that 10 million more people work for government than work in manufacturing highlights an important point. When government officials talk about "creating jobs," they usually mean creating government jobs. The trouble is that those in "public service" expect to be paid well, and their perks are fabulous. Unfortunately, any method of paying salaries and benefits in the government sector has to destroy jobs in the private sector. Governments have only three ways of paying employees — taxes, borrowing and printing money. Each of those reduces income and wealth among those paying taxes, servicing debts or stuck with shrinking greenbacks. In short, governments can't "create jobs." Adding government jobs is never a net addition to employment opportunities, because it means a heavier burden on private employers and employees.

Read Bastiat's The Broken Window and the next time you here a politician talk about creating jobs, hear that broken glass hit the floor, and then make fast and frequent tracks away from that lying critter.