...President Barack Obama and Gov. Jennifer Granholm came to Holland bearing gifts: cash subsidies for an electric car battery plant owned by the Korean firm LG Chem. The federal contribution is $151 million in "stimulus" money, and Michigan taxpayers are kicking in another $100 million in cash (plus more later). Of course the real gift-givers are taxpayers, who are all but buying the plant for the company, given that its construction is expected to cost between $244 million and $303 million.
Both President Obama and Gov. Granholm boasted at the event that the plant is a sign of "economic recovery." Yet each of the approximately 400 jobs the operation is expected to generate will cost taxpayers $625,000. At this rate, it would cost $5 trillion to provide employment to the approximately 8 million Americans who have lost their jobs in the current downturn. That amount represents almost one-third of the nation's annual gross domestic product.
(The state subsidy alone amounts to $250,000 per job. At this rate, buying back all of the nearly 600,000 jobs lost here since 2003 would cost Michigan taxpayers $150 billion, or almost half the state's total output for a year.)
Showing posts with label lost jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lost jobs. Show all posts
Monday, July 19, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Obama "hopeless, helpless, clueless and bankrupt of good ideas"
As former President Ronald Reagan might have said, "Obama, there you go again."
The current occupant of the White House claims to know how to create jobs. He claims jobs have been created. But so far the score is Great Obama Depression 2.2 million lost jobs, Obama 0 -- a blowout.
Obama is as hopeless, helpless, clueless and bankrupt of good ideas as the manager of the Chicago Cubs in late September. This "community organizer" knows as much about private-sector jobs as Pamela Anderson knows about nuclear physics.
It's time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer. With his massive spending and tax hikes -- rewarding big government and big unions, while punishing taxpayers and business owners -- Obama has killed jobs, he has killed motivation to create new jobs, he has killed the motivation to invest in new businesses, or expand old ones. With all this killing, Obama should be given the top spot on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
Meanwhile, he has kept the union workers of GM and Chrysler employed (with taxpayer money). He has made sure that most government employee union members got their annual raises for sleeping on the job (with taxpayer money). He made sure that his voters got handouts mislabeled as "tax cuts" even though they never paid taxes (with taxpayer money). And he made sure that major campaign contributors collected billions off government stimulus (with taxpayer money).
As far as the taxpayers -- the people who actually take risks with our own money to create small businesses and jobs and pay most of the taxes -- we require protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The current occupant of the White House claims to know how to create jobs. He claims jobs have been created. But so far the score is Great Obama Depression 2.2 million lost jobs, Obama 0 -- a blowout.
Obama is as hopeless, helpless, clueless and bankrupt of good ideas as the manager of the Chicago Cubs in late September. This "community organizer" knows as much about private-sector jobs as Pamela Anderson knows about nuclear physics.
It's time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer. With his massive spending and tax hikes -- rewarding big government and big unions, while punishing taxpayers and business owners -- Obama has killed jobs, he has killed motivation to create new jobs, he has killed the motivation to invest in new businesses, or expand old ones. With all this killing, Obama should be given the top spot on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
Meanwhile, he has kept the union workers of GM and Chrysler employed (with taxpayer money). He has made sure that most government employee union members got their annual raises for sleeping on the job (with taxpayer money). He made sure that his voters got handouts mislabeled as "tax cuts" even though they never paid taxes (with taxpayer money). And he made sure that major campaign contributors collected billions off government stimulus (with taxpayer money).
As far as the taxpayers -- the people who actually take risks with our own money to create small businesses and jobs and pay most of the taxes -- we require protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Each government subsidized green job costs 4.8 jobs in overall economy, 6.9 jobs in industrial sector, think tanks find
A new study by a pair of Italian think tankers isn’t likely to be cited any time soon by President Obama or fans of his massive program to force the U.S. economy to move away from fossil fuels to “green” energy produced by renewable resources like ethanol, wind, solar, and biomass.
Carlo Stagnaro and Luciano Lavecchia are researchers with the Instituto Bruno Leoni. They developed a study “to evaluate the effectiveness of green subsidies in job creation. The question we tried to answer is: If the resources currently invested to promote renewable energy were invested in other economic sectors, would more or fewer people have work?”
What they found, according to their summary in European edition of The Wall Street Journal should come as no surprise to anybody familiar with the typical results of government subsidies being used to pick winners and losers in any segment of a free market economy.
“So one green job costs on average as much 4.8 jobs in the entire economy, or 6.9 jobs in the industrial sector. The same amount of subsidies that have already been given or committed could produce nearly five times as many jobs if allowed to be spent by the private sector elsewhere in the economy,” they said.
Those results are consistent with the conclusion of a Spanish researcher who last year calculated that for every “green” job created via Spanish government subsidies, at least 2.2 jobs in the private sector are lost.
The Italian researchers add that:
“What’s often ignored is that the creation of green jobs through subsidies and regulation inherently leads to the destruction of job opportunities in other industries. That’s because any resource forcibly taken out of one sector and politically allocated in favor of renewable energy cannot be invested elsewhere.”
Carlo Stagnaro and Luciano Lavecchia are researchers with the Instituto Bruno Leoni. They developed a study “to evaluate the effectiveness of green subsidies in job creation. The question we tried to answer is: If the resources currently invested to promote renewable energy were invested in other economic sectors, would more or fewer people have work?”
What they found, according to their summary in European edition of The Wall Street Journal should come as no surprise to anybody familiar with the typical results of government subsidies being used to pick winners and losers in any segment of a free market economy.
“So one green job costs on average as much 4.8 jobs in the entire economy, or 6.9 jobs in the industrial sector. The same amount of subsidies that have already been given or committed could produce nearly five times as many jobs if allowed to be spent by the private sector elsewhere in the economy,” they said.
Those results are consistent with the conclusion of a Spanish researcher who last year calculated that for every “green” job created via Spanish government subsidies, at least 2.2 jobs in the private sector are lost.
The Italian researchers add that:
“What’s often ignored is that the creation of green jobs through subsidies and regulation inherently leads to the destruction of job opportunities in other industries. That’s because any resource forcibly taken out of one sector and politically allocated in favor of renewable energy cannot be invested elsewhere.”
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