The fruitcakes over at the Green New Deal have another report out today. It's the usual thing, print more money to spend on the things that we like and damn the rest of us. But I did find this little snippet interesting:

“Germany already has twice as many people employed in the renewables sector than in all other energy sectors combined. An estimated 387,000 jobs had been created in the renewables sector in Germany by 2011, far more than the total 182,000 people working in all other energy sectors. By 2020, more than 600,000 people are expected to work in the renewables sector – roughly as many as are currently employed in the automotive industry."

They fail to understand that of course jobs are a cost, not a benefit, of doing something. Yes, jobs are even a cost to the workers: that's why we have to bribe them with real cash money to do them.

We do of course like the things that are produced by people working but we'd much rather have those things with fewer people having to be bribed to get out of bed in the morning. For example, in Germany they have 387,000 people producing some 25% of the electricity and 182,000 producing 75% of it. It would clearly be a good idea if those working on renewables were as productive as those in the other energy sectors. If they were, then 25% of the country's electricity could be produced using only 60,000 workers instead of 387,000: leaving rather a lot of people to go an do something else, find the cure for cancer or tend to elderly.

But our green loons will no doubt dismiss this simple economic reality as just neoliberalism. For they really do see to think that jobs are a benefit of their schemes. So much so that they provide an appendix detailing how many jobs will be created by their plants. I suppose we should forgive them, after we've corrected them of course, but they really do seem to believe that their listing of jobs created is a benefit of their plans, rather than what it is, a guide to the rest of us about how expensive said plans are.