Green Jobs Fraud
Three years later, it seems that this money has been altogether wasted, and that the renewable energy revolution has failed to materialize. This is evidenced first by the shoddy performance of these billion-dollar grants in creating jobs.
- Through the broad stimulus package, the Obama administration awarded $9 billion to the Department of Energy for the creation of these green jobs.
- According to a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a part of the U.S. Department of Energy, that funding created only 910 direct jobs between 2009 and 2011.
- Using this figure, American taxpayers paid approximately $9.8 million per job.
- If we allow for the broad classification of "indirect jobs," the figure increases to 5,510 jobs created at a cost of $1.63 million per job.
Meanwhile, the current administration has done all it can to strangle job growth in the oil sector of the economy. By killing the Keystone XL pipeline to deliver oil to American refineries from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, President Obama demonstrated a severe bias against proven job growth, favoring instead the ineffective vehicles employed by his stimulus package.
- Mark Ayers, past head of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, told the Huffington Post last November that "the Keystone Pipeline represents the prospect for 20,000 immediate jobs."
- Further, these positions would be complemented by approximately 500,000 indirect jobs, made available by the economic multiplier effect of the project.
- Importantly, the Keystone pipeline required no government support (that is, no tax dollars lost).
Source: "Obama's Green-Jobs Fraud Exposed," Investor's Business Daily, June 21, 2012.
1 comment:
A real shame this green revolution didn't materialize, the UK government are currently pumping money into green energy. My friends company have just put out building tender for a new offshore tidal plant, should create quite a few jobs too.
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