Dan Popp
"Green jobs"
By Dan Popp
I have to beg the reader's pardon for all the "quotation marks" in this column. The office supply store had them "on sale" — "All slightly dented punctuation must go!"
Ah, but seriously, we have to stop and laugh at the enviro-apocalyptics today. Ridicule is the proper response to the ridiculous; and if you don't find many of their histrionics funny, you haven't yet developed an appreciation for good absurdist humor.
For example, there's a radio commercial playing in various states advocating legislation to create "green jobs." I'm not sure what a "green job" is — climbing windmills to scrape out the bird guts? — but Congress certainly must make them. Here's the funniest bit:
The spots airing in California promise almost a quarter of a million new jobs in that state — others, a tenth of that. If Ohio's 80,000 is the average, times 50 states, that's 4 MILLION NEW JOBS! Now come on, America — isn't that a no-brainer?
Job Creation — Ex Nihilo
I wonder if anyone in Congress or in the Fundamentalist Gaian Community knows how a job is really created. I do. It's surely not by government saying, "Let there be a job!" God can create things out of nothing. Government can't. Let's not confuse the two, please.
A job is created when a business seeks to fill a need in the marketplace. Consumers want the product, so the company employs people to make it. And, boys and girls, those lucky folks who make the products that people want, have a job!
It's all about demand.
If consumers want something, businesses spring up like mushrooms to supply it to them. Banks loan money to entrepreneurs who build businesses to supply the demand, and pretty soon people are being hired. The only thing government has to do is stay out of the way.
If government coercion is required to start the business, that means no private company has figured out a way to make money at it. Which means that there isn't enough demand to pay for the expenses necessary to supply the product. And time is not the issue. Banks and investors and venture capitalists exist to solve that problem.
...From the People Who Brought You "Social Security"
A business that must be artificially created will probably have to be artificially sustained, and sustained indefinitely — unless the Barney Franks among us are right, and all businesspeople are wrong about the viability of this new enterprise. Ha! I crack myself up.
Government sustenance to keep this brain-dead business breathing means taxes must be taken from you, who don't want the product, and given to the business to continue making the product you don't want. The people "employed" there are "tax eaters, not taxpayers," to use LBJ's phrase. Money is sucked out of the real economy, your standard of living goes down, and the jobs-total is probably a net loss!
Yeah, bring on those 4,000,000 great "green jobs"!
The Very Sad Reality
All joking aside, I don't know whether the Earth's climate is warming, cooling or neither. I can't make it past the hot air coming from the self-anointed "Saviors of the Planet" to find out. This same radio ad uses the word "invest" like Obama uses it: backwards. Investment is voluntarily taking money out of use for the present, and moving it to the future; they mean robbing people from the future via massive debt so we can spend it now. One has to laugh to keep from crying.
The generations for whom we are supposedly saving the planet will thank us, I'm sure, for bankrupting them so we could enjoy faux employment. After all, it was all for them.
If so-called "environmentalists" have a serious message, they're going to have to stop making me pee my pants laughing before I can hear it.
What about it, greenies?
Click here to discuss this article.
© Dan Popp
April 22, 2009
I have to beg the reader's pardon for all the "quotation marks" in this column. The office supply store had them "on sale" — "All slightly dented punctuation must go!"
Ah, but seriously, we have to stop and laugh at the enviro-apocalyptics today. Ridicule is the proper response to the ridiculous; and if you don't find many of their histrionics funny, you haven't yet developed an appreciation for good absurdist humor.
For example, there's a radio commercial playing in various states advocating legislation to create "green jobs." I'm not sure what a "green job" is — climbing windmills to scrape out the bird guts? — but Congress certainly must make them. Here's the funniest bit:
-
Right now, Congress is debating a clean energy jobs plan that will jumpstart our economy, reduce carbon pollution, and break our dependence on foreign oil. Investing in clean energy can create 80,000 jobs in new industries for Ohio workers. That's right, 80,000 new jobs that can't be shipped overseas.
The spots airing in California promise almost a quarter of a million new jobs in that state — others, a tenth of that. If Ohio's 80,000 is the average, times 50 states, that's 4 MILLION NEW JOBS! Now come on, America — isn't that a no-brainer?
Job Creation — Ex Nihilo
I wonder if anyone in Congress or in the Fundamentalist Gaian Community knows how a job is really created. I do. It's surely not by government saying, "Let there be a job!" God can create things out of nothing. Government can't. Let's not confuse the two, please.
A job is created when a business seeks to fill a need in the marketplace. Consumers want the product, so the company employs people to make it. And, boys and girls, those lucky folks who make the products that people want, have a job!
It's all about demand.
If consumers want something, businesses spring up like mushrooms to supply it to them. Banks loan money to entrepreneurs who build businesses to supply the demand, and pretty soon people are being hired. The only thing government has to do is stay out of the way.
If government coercion is required to start the business, that means no private company has figured out a way to make money at it. Which means that there isn't enough demand to pay for the expenses necessary to supply the product. And time is not the issue. Banks and investors and venture capitalists exist to solve that problem.
...From the People Who Brought You "Social Security"
A business that must be artificially created will probably have to be artificially sustained, and sustained indefinitely — unless the Barney Franks among us are right, and all businesspeople are wrong about the viability of this new enterprise. Ha! I crack myself up.
Government sustenance to keep this brain-dead business breathing means taxes must be taken from you, who don't want the product, and given to the business to continue making the product you don't want. The people "employed" there are "tax eaters, not taxpayers," to use LBJ's phrase. Money is sucked out of the real economy, your standard of living goes down, and the jobs-total is probably a net loss!
Yeah, bring on those 4,000,000 great "green jobs"!
The Very Sad Reality
All joking aside, I don't know whether the Earth's climate is warming, cooling or neither. I can't make it past the hot air coming from the self-anointed "Saviors of the Planet" to find out. This same radio ad uses the word "invest" like Obama uses it: backwards. Investment is voluntarily taking money out of use for the present, and moving it to the future; they mean robbing people from the future via massive debt so we can spend it now. One has to laugh to keep from crying.
The generations for whom we are supposedly saving the planet will thank us, I'm sure, for bankrupting them so we could enjoy faux employment. After all, it was all for them.
If so-called "environmentalists" have a serious message, they're going to have to stop making me pee my pants laughing before I can hear it.
What about it, greenies?
Click here to discuss this article.
© Dan Popp
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
