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free trade & free markets too much government

The Color of Boom and Bust

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You’ve heard of “green collar jobs.” But what about “glass collar jobs”?

The Heartland Institute just put out a handy little pamphlet called The Cap and Trade Handbook, by James M. Taylor. It debunks various aspects of today’s obsession with fixing the global climate by laying on new restrictions, regulations and taxes. On page 5, Taylor addresses, colorfully, the “green jobs” issue.

Would cap-and-trade create new jobs? The handbook says, “sure, forcing people to buy expensive alternative energy means some new jobs would be created in the wind and solar industry. But even more jobs would be destroyed in the more efficient conventional energy sectors. . . .”

True — new jobs would come at a cost. The pamphlet then considers what would happen if the government hired thugs to break our windows. Sure, “such a program would create a lot of new ‘glass collar’ jobs in the window repair industry.” But employment would not increase on net, and we’d obviously be worse off, not better.

Unfortunately, the big headline on the page insists that “There will be no employment boom in the ‘green collar’ jobs sector.” Not true, as explained.

Just as subsidizing mortgages led to a housing boom this past decade, cap-and-trade policy would likely create a new boom industry that also would not sustain itself. And then explode. Spectacularly. Disastrously.

Financial bubbles break. That’s bad, no matter what color.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

2 replies on “The Color of Boom and Bust”

One could write exactly the same article about the current highly-touted “recovery.” But as soon as the printing-press-money disappears, whole industries (which are unsustainable in a “real” economy) will collapse, and unemployment will skyrocket yet again, above the current 18-20% real rate.

I wonder what would happen if companies would hire people here in the good old USA instead of sending millions of jobs to China, India, Mexico etc. With the recession and joblessness it woulld be smart for business to lower the price of products and do as Applied Materials did a few years ago when things got tight, give everyone who made 100K or less a 5% pay cut and the ones who made more received a 20% cut, I believe. I know we got 5% and the boss got a much larger cut. The cut was for a few months. No one lost their job, we servived – lower taxes helped- and then when things got better they increased the wages back to normal. It felt like we had a raise and no one suffered that much and the company stayed solid.
Could our State and Federal governments do the same? Sure, except the unions would have a fit.
They might go on strike. Then the states could save a real chunk of change.

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