One 'Green' Job Kills Two Others (Or More)

Greens like Obama often assert that using government to encourage 'green' technology will decrease unemployment.

Veronique du Rugy says otherwise, and I'm much more inclined to believe her than nearly anyone else.

This study, from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Spain shows that the reality is quite different. After examining Spain’s experience with an aggressive wind-power program, the researchers concluded, among other things, the cost of creating a green job in Spain was 571,000 Euros each (so roughly $800,000) and for each green job created 2 private jobs were lost.

In fact, as Sunil Sharan demonstrates, some 'green' technology — like the 'Smart Grid' — is actually designed to reduce the number of jobs...

Now let's consider job losses. It takes one worker today roughly 15 minutes to read a single meter. So in a day, a meter reader can scan about 30 meters, or about 700 meters a month. Meters are typically read once a month, making it the base period to calculate meter-reading jobs. Reading a million meters every month engages about 1,400 personnel. In five years, 20 million manually read meters are expected to disappear, taking with them some 28,000 meter-reading jobs.

In other words, instead of creating jobs, smart metering will probably result in net job destruction. This should not be surprising because the main method of making the electrical grid "smart" is by automating its functions. Automation by definition obviates the need for people.

...and that's as it should be. As free market economists have noted again and again, it's easy to create full employment by simply having half the unemployed, for example, dig ditches and the other half fill them in again. Only the free market can create long-term productive employment.

Of course, they also point out what should be obvious to any casual reader of history. There have been many jobs eliminated by technology, but such advances invariably free up resources to create even more — and more productive — jobs in the future.

So much for the typical fantasy-based — and counter-productive — Progressive optimism over state-coerced social engineering in employment.

British Inaugurate UK Tea Party

Daniel Hannan, the journalist and MP who became world famous some months ago for his liberty-loving smackdown of the UK National Health Service, is leading the way.

It's an interesting turn of events since many philosophical, cultural, or political trends that occur in America actually have originated in Great Britain.

Best of luck to our British kinsmen in their struggle for freedom.

My New Pin-Up Girl: Ann McElhinney

Nicole Gelinas and Heather MacDonald at City Journal, Kimberly Strassel at the Wall St. Journal, Caroline Baum at Bloomberg, the mighty Veronique de Rugy at Reason and NRO... all fine thinkin' dames. But — fickle heel that I am — I have to declare my new devotion to the heroic Ann McElhinney.


Ms. McElhinney is the director/producer of "Not Evil Just Wrong" – a smackdown of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and other viro nonsense — and a defense of mining called, "Mine Your Own Business."

Writing at Big Hollywood, Ms. McElhinney urges James Cameron, director of Avatar* to grow up. That will never happen, of course, but in the process she does a superb job of defending human extraction of the Earth's resources for human benefit. Her argument is so simple even a Hollywood director could follow it:

Mining makes everything about James Cameron’s life and our lives in the developed world, beautiful, possible, bearable, majestic, gorgeous and full of promise.

The people of the rain forest on the other hand who live the simple, organic, back-to-nature life so adored by the Hollywood elite such as James Cameron, also have short lives of misery, disease and squalor. They would do anything to have a piece of the James Cameron life and escape their subsistence hunter-gathering nightmare.
...
Mining companies bring jobs, roads, infrastructure, health clinics and opportunities to some of the poorest people on the planet.

James Cameron, even more than rest of us, uses the earth’s resources for his pleasure and his very profitable business. His films all employ enormous quantities of heavy metals in planes, boats, trains and the latest cutting edge camera, lighting and computer technology.

Everything about Cameron’s work uses metals mined from somewhere and his gigantic transport needs are fueled by oil.

So that's why I'm in love with Ann McElhinney, 'cause I just can't resist a woman with really big brains. I'm pretty sure this one's gonna last.


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* Best quote ever on that silly piece of viro propaganda:

Hollywood: For their own gain, Military and corporate villains kill and pillage a peaceful indigenous population that is in tune with Mother Nature.

Reality: In Haiti, Mother Nature kicks the hell out of a backward, indigenous population and American military and corporations immediately come to their comfort and aid. [from a commenter at HotAir, Feb 22, 2010 - 2:11 pm]

Tucker on the Health Legislation Summit

William Tucker writing at American Spectator continues to show that he's far more knowledgeable about the health insurance business than the Feds. (Rep. Paul Ryan excepted.)

Obama's premise is wrong. We're not going to be able to "get everybody into the pool" because doing that would mean breaking up the system of employment-based health benefits that is protected by ERISA. That 43 percent of the market is staying put. The only thing that could crack this wall of protection would be if benefits were highly taxed and the federal "insurance exchanges" were made so attractive that people were willing to give up their employment-based benefits in exchange. Those are the things that Obama has sworn won't happen.

Instead, whatever "exchanges" are created will remain isolated, populated only by the very sick and people who can't get coverage anywhere else. That's what we have now. The only thing that can make the exchange more attractive is if it is highly subsidized. Several states tried this in the 1990s and found it impossibly expensive -- as several Senators testified yesterday.

Why Health Care Costs Are So High

William Tucker has authored one of the most informative articles on health care costs I've ever read. He explains clearly and in detail some of the reasons they're so high. The facts he lays out are alone enough to point the way to how properly to 'reform' the health care and health insurance sectors of the economy.

Among many other things, it shows how the Federal government has been willing to selectively override long-standing legislation (in this case, anti-trust) for the purpose of social engineering. Even better, it's a classic example of how interference in the market leads to ill effects calling for ever more legislation to fix the problems created, in a never-ending death spiral toward pure socialism.

Congress took up the offer by passing the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, a bi-partisan effort co-sponsored by Senators Pat McCarran, a Democrat from Nevada, and Homer Ferguson, a Republican from Michigan.

The law reserved licensing and regulation of the industry to the states, assuming they would run it along the lines of a public utility. Because they were setting rates in conjunction with state insurance authorities, the companies were allowed to collaborate on data collection and risk estimates. For this they were exempted from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Thus began the system we have today, where there is no national market for health, fire, or auto insurance but 50 separate state markets. Insurance companies must go through extensive licensing procedures in order to gain permission to sell insurance in each and every state. Some states are very permissive, others are very restrictive.

As usually happens in such situations, companies that are already licensed to sell insurance generally oppose licensing other carriers in order to suppress competition. In many states, regulators have formed a virtual partnership with one large carrier -- usually the local Blue Cross."

...

Typically the providers of some marginal health service such as chiropractic or treatment for alcoholism will come to the legislature and insist that theirs is a service essential to all humanity. Often crusading consumers of chiropractic or alcoholism treatment second their efforts.

The legislature responds by mandating that every insurance policy include coverage. Before long, people are being forced to buy coverage for services they don't want or need. The result is that insurance costs go up for everyone.

The Council on Affordable Health Insurance estimates that there are now 2,133 separate mandates in the 50 states for services as diverse as podiatrists, midwives, occupational therapists, athletic trainers and pastoral counselors. CAHI estimates these mandates raise the price of insurance 20 to 50 percent.

The entire article is well worth the time to read and digest. This is intellectual ammunition of the highest caliber.

6, 225 Carat Emerald Found

I've been fascinated by gems ever since as a lad I saw an ad with some of the world's finest. There was the Kohinoor diamond (105 carats),


the Hope (45 carats, steel blue),


the Star of Africa (530 carats, cut from the Cullinan, 3,106 carats),



and many more. But this latest find is a real whopper, even by those standards: a 6,225 carat emerald found recently in Zambia.



The story goes on to discuss two others.

The largest uncut emerald believed to have been found was in Carnaiba, Brazil in 1974. It was an incredible 86,136-carat natural beryl crystal. The stone was eventually valued at $1,120,080.

The largest emerald crystal ever discovered was 7,025 carats and was found in a mine in Colombia.

I don't know what the technical differences are between those two, but either way, these are some very big gemstones.

Incomprehensible Headline of the Day

A Townhall story reports: "Army to Oppose Immediate Suspension of Gay Firings"

I haven't read the story, but if anyone can grasp this headline he's better at deciphering crypto-English than I. Does it mean gays will or won't be dismissed from the military? Does it mean the Army is acting at once or deferring a decision? Does it mean anything at all?

Sometimes an editor just has too much to do, I guess.