Green Collar Jobs

An IBD editorial hits the nail on the head:

The thinking is that we can radically alter our economy and at the same create millions of well-paying “green-collar jobs.” Even some business groups embrace the idea.

“The one thing that the Chamber of Commerce and the Sierra Club agree on,” notes energy lobbyist Scott Segal, “is that the answer to climate change is transformative technologies.”

Maybe so. But claims that spending on green technologies will create “millions” of new jobs, as both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have repeatedly claimed, are false.

Such assertions rest on fallacious economic logic that sounds good on the stump but in reality results in a lower standard of living and fewer jobs for all Americans.

When Bill Clinton recently suggested that “we just have to slow down our economy” to cut greenhouse gases, he accidentally uttered the truth: The brave, new “Green Society” being planned for us now in the nation’s capital would be better called the “Lean Society.”

As any economist will tell you, adopting new green technologies isn’t cost-free; it requires trade-offs. Money spent on curbing greenhouse gases is money that can’t be spent elsewhere, so opportunities will inevitably be lost.

Perhaps these legislators should read some Bastiat.