[quote=EconProf]So the taxpayers will pay for this “investment” in green jobs. This is the problem when the government tries to pick winners and losers instead of the private sector. They make choices based on faulty science and the whims of extreme environmentalists. Private investors, with their own money at stake, tend to weigh costs and benefits before allocating resources. They may not always get it right, but they suffer the consequences when wrong (absent government bailouts). I wonder if any politicians or bureaucrats will suffer from this boondogle. Also, had that government “investment” money stayed in taxpayers’ pockets and been spent on consumer items, how many real private sector jobs been created?[/quote]
I don’t think government funding of projects isn’t the issue per se… But things about this “green job” was bound to fail if there is no clear game plan. Come on, did anyone really think that any of these green job grants were going to succeed, without a centralized, definitive plan by the government on WHAT and HOW specifically the money was to be spent?
I mean, who would have thought “projects” that were self-started by individuals/corporations, marketed and back by VC’s and marketing/sales folks who often inflate and distort the truth about a company’s accomplishments, wouldn’t have failed?
And regarding those defense projects. There is a big difference between funding of these green jobs versus defense/intelligence spending. Defense/intelligence projects typically originate from the government with a specific goal and specific result…The way a lot of these green job grants went was basically a free-for-all loan to whatever cock-a-mania idea someone applying for the grant could come up with….In other words, this “green job program” never had any direction but just to hand out money to companies that could market themselves (lie) the best to government who probably had no idea on what they really were going to do or how to do it….For all the railing against greedy corporations and expression of how government should regulate more, they sure didn’t regulate and provide enough oversight on a “centralized green economy program”. This was a disaster waiting to happen. I would be surprised to find any meaningful success stories from green job funding when it’s all said and done…
