Obama’s Green Policies Will Turn the Lights Out on Job Creation

Nicolas Loris / June 14, 2011

Yesterday, President Obama met with his Jobs and Competitiveness Council and delivered remarks at Cree, a lighting manufacturing facility in Durham, North Carolina. He discussed the importance of the “clean energy revolution” that will help jumpstart the economy. But the green energy policies President Obama has been advertising are anti-job creation and anti-competitiveness more than anything. Here’s why.

President Obama liberally uses the word investments when he talks about government funding for green technologies, and when he does, he commits the “free lunch” fallacy that plagues our politicians who believe we can use taxpayer funds to spend our way to an economic recovery.

Government spending will create some jobs to build whatever politicians want us to build, but this diverts labor, capital, and materials from the private sector that could be used more efficiently to create even more jobs. The net effect is that subsidized green jobs destroy jobs elsewhere in the economy. (more…)