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EDITORIAL
Green jobs: It's not quite going as planned
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Half the government's $38.6 billion is spent. Result? A whopping 3,545 new, "permanent" green jobs created, at a cost of a mere $5.6 million per job -- leaving just 61,455 promised jobs to go. Yet the Energy Department says the Obama administration's green-jobs loan guarantee program is still on track to meet its employment goal of 65,000 jobs.
The program came under scrutiny Wednesday at a House oversight committee hearing about the collapse of Solyndra, a solar-panel maker whose closure could leave taxpayers on the hook for as much as $527 million.
Mr. Obama's efforts to create green jobs "is lagging behind expectations," The Washington Post reports. Many economists say that because alternative-energy projects are so expensive and slow to ramp up, they are not the most efficient way to stimulate the economy.
The Energy Department insists the green-jobs program is working fine. As evidence, it claims credit for saving 33,000 jobs at Ford Motor Co., about half of the Detroit automaker's entire hourly and salaried U.S. work force. The department says the biggest of its loan guarantees, for $5.9 billion, protected the jobs at Ford by enabling the automaker to upgrade plants in five states to build more energy-efficient vehicles.
But several economists told The Post they doubt the loan program saved 33,000 jobs at Ford. Indeed. For politicians and bureaucrats who have never brought so much as a root beer stand to fruition in the real world to lavish billions of other people's dollars on politically favored ventures, and then claim they've "saved" every worker who still manages to cling to a job, is like a child leaning against a tree and claiming credit for holding it up.
BrightSource Energy, a developer of utility-scale solar-power projects, is the recipient of a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee, the second-biggest loan awarded so far. The outfit currently employs 700 construction workers, but will employ only 86 people on a permanent basis -- at a net cost of $18 million in taxpayer "investment" for each permanent job created. Obama administration officials respond that those jobs "are high-quality and will improve the economy's productivity," The Post reports.
And you could get the same economic result by paying each of the same 86 people $90,000 per year, for the next 20 years, to do nothing, because they'd have to spend it somewhere. If that's efficient job creation, let's ask for another couple of billion dollars and put 1,000 people to work digging a tunnel to bring Mississippi floodwaters west of the Rockies -- with teaspoons.
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David: Yes, of course that will happen. And as more labor drops out of the labor market, and go back to growing crops (and going into the business of stealing the crops) the economy that we know today will be destroyed, just as Marx said. And, its really inevitable UNLESS the "market" decides that a little socialism is advisable. Otherwise...
@beentheredonethat. Have you ever thought that maybe with the price of labor being reduced as a postive side too. As the price drops more and more will seek to own the means of production themselves?
David: History has demonstrated that men will indeed sell their labor for less than the cost of maintaining themselves and their families. Perhaps you need to review the history of the 20th century mining industry in America, or better still watch or read 'The Grapes of Wrath". Political viewpoints aside, both illustrate that men will indeed sell their labor for less and less, even to the point where they are unable to even feed themselves. Again, this is no opinion, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Keynes. It has simply to do with the nature of men, and the system of free markets. At the end of its time, capitalism will force the holders of capital to pay their workers less and less in order to compete. At some point, through the use of machines to increase the producers output, and reduce their costs, people will no longer have the means to purchase that output and demand will not exist. This is the seed that capitalism sows for its own destruction and again, there is nothing you can do to change that, particularly by trying to label it is something else.
Like I said, beetheredonethat, the cost of labor does not live in a vacuum. At a certain point workers will no longer sell their labor at the price business is offering. There are two forces at work, the potential employees and the employer. Both need each other and the two will stabilize the cost. You are still speaking Keyensianism. Which has been proven to be bunk. As I have just done with your theory on what is wrong with capitalism.
Anybody want to invest in the Desert Express? Harry's train to nowhere. And had did the plan for the new bridge work out?
David: How right you are sir; when the "price" of labor goes down (eventually) the "cost" of goods will go down. When the cost of goods goes down, "profits" will follow FORCING reductions in the "cost" of labor resulting in the price of goods going down and so on and so on. Eventually, and at every point along the way, businesses will REPLACE human labor with machines, further reducing the buying power of people, forcing the price of goods down still further, with resulting profit decreases, and still fewer and fewer jobs until....the end. As I said, and of course, I'm not the first, capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction and nothing you or I or anyone else says will change that fact.
@beentheredonethat. The labor market does not live in a vacuum. If the overall cost of labor goes down, resulting in reduced wages, the costs of goods will have to follow. And the businesses that don't follow the trend will self destruct with prices being to high for customers. You are speaking Keynesianism. A.K.A. voodoo. That system is out, if you haven't heard. Shown to be not actual economics but, as I said, voodoo. Don't get me wrong, I have no problems with you practicing whatever religion you like. Just know we in this century are snickering at your backwards barbaric ways. Not directly in your face mind you, more behind your back. You might suspect we are laughing at you but can never be sure. So, here I am admitting it to you. You seem like a nice enough fellow. It seems the polite thing to do to let you know that your proverbial barn door is open.
Capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction because capitalism insists that the lowest cost producer, all other things being equal, wins. Because, in today's global economy, inputs other than labor, are relatively equal in cost, producers are competing, for the most part, to REDUCE the cost of their labor. Since labor, when its income is reduced has less purchasing power, producers will ultimately see less demand for their goods. This is not subject to dispute, and it is indeed happening right before our eyes. As more and more "high wages" jobs are transferred to the "lowest cost" producer (China, India, Pakistan) American will have fewer jobs which will pay reduced wages; this is of course what we are seeing today. As the trend continues, and America has fewer jobs, and even those remaining, at lower wages, American citizens will have less ability to "demand" goods (since they will not have the income to pay for those goods) and manufacturers will have even less reason to employ Americans resulting in still fewer jobs. Capitalism REQUIRES this outcome and it does not good to cast aspersions about "bad corporations" or even "bad people who run corporations" because those corporations are doing ONLY what capitalists (shareholders) demand that they do; compete in the world and earn a profit. The seeds of the destruction of capitalism are sown into the fabric of this system and no denying it, or casting aspersions about those who recognize it, will change it. The ONLY chance, that capitalism has, is IF it adopts SOME socialist aspects which will permit sufficient REDISTRIBUTION of the assets that capitalists acquire, so that the system can continue to operate. Ironic isn't it?
@beentheredonethat. Wow, you have a really twisted sense of capitalism and reality. The seeds of the economic destruction we are seeing today were sewn in 1913 with the creation of a central bank. Since that year the economic system could not be classified as "capitalistic" as true capitalism is just another word for the free market. Can't have a free market that is controlled by a central authority (central bank). Bzzzt, you lose on what is to blame. Nice try, play again.
Nothing changes for the hopeless--or cynics. Things certainly changed last election cycle. They will again. Don't think so? Don't vote--and don't care.
For the rest--do vote--if you care.
Either way--the clock ticks, the day of reckoning is coming and that is all to the good.
“A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye”