Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Green dole

While the stupidity of president Obama continues to break new records, one would struggle for find anything more facile than his claim that his obsession with global warming will create millions of new green jobs and so spur the US economy toward recovery.

Now, even Reuters is beginning to notice, offering a details of a Spanish report which rather confounds Obama's enthusiasm for Spain as an example to follow.

The report is produced by economics professor Juan Carlos of the University of Madrid, who has found that for every green job "created" by the Spanish government, an average of 2.2 other jobs have been destroyed. And, of those fabulous green jobs, only 1 in 10 was permanent.

"Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the US should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created," writes professor Gabriel Calzada in an introduction to the study.

"The study's results demonstrate how such 'green jobs' policy clearly hinders Spain's way out of the current economic crisis, even while US politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil," Calzada writes.

However, Reuters has found a way of dismissing this inconvenient truth, relying on a Wall Street Journal clog which notes that Calzada, as the founder of a libertarian think tank, "might not be completely objective" – as against railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri, of course, who is totally objective.

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