It's Excellent That Renewable Energy Doesn't Create Many Green Jobs For Jobs Are A Cost

Forbes ^ | 9/30/13 | Tim Worstall, Contributor

[Nachum]

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting walk through some of the myths about renewable energy. It’s not quite (quite!) as expensive as many think, variability isn’t entirely a killer and so on. But the one that interests me most is the assertion that renewables just don’t seem to be creating that many green jobs:

During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama touted the prospect that investing in clean energy could produce five million “green jobs.” The idea of creating jobs helped underpin the $90 billion clean-energy stimulus in 2009 and later efforts, and remains a staple of administration rhetoric.

But renewable energy has not been the job creator that its boosters envisioned. While the amount of wind and solar power has more than doubled since President Obama took office, renewable-energy jobs have not.

This is excellent of course for jobs (whether green or not) are not a benefit of whatever plan we have they are a cost of that plan. So, that we are able to produce more renewable energy without creating many more jobs is an excellent outcome.

[Nachum]

It's Excellent That Renewable Energy Doesn't Create Many Green Jobs For Jobs Are A Cost Not A Benefit

[ne1410s]

Are you sure that this isn’t an Onion article?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

It is of course true that engineering is the art of reducing the need for labor (jobs) and all other inputs, while maintaining or increasing the quantity and quality of products/services which is the output.

But although jobs are indeed a cost, and everyone complains about their boss and the constraints of their job, it has to be said that there is a social cost to the child due to the absence of a father who can say that he fixes people’s pipes, or makes their faucets, or treats their diseases, or builds and runs a business, or whatever. We need the affirmation of the worth of our efforts.

Government “welfare” doesn’t fill that bill, it is not connected to any "socially necessary labor” (a phrase used by Marx but not original to him). Charity is connected to the socially necessary labor of its donor, but a government dole is systematically isolated from any such connection.