This was originally posted on PoodleRose on August 5, 2013. Comments have not been migrated.
For years, the Obama Administration has been touting the “green” jobs that it will create through your tax dollars. But recent testimony by the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics–John Galvin–reveals that we’ve had millions of “green” jobs for decades and didn’t know it.
For example, the jobs at a used book store are considered “green” because the books are being “recycled.” Trash collection and servicing portable toilets are also considered “green.”
If this strikes you as comical, you will probably quit laughing when you realize that taxpayers spent $100,000 for each of the “green” jobs “created.” Given the fact that many of these “green” jobs were actually the result of reclassifying existing workers, the number is actually much higher.
For instance, BLS counts construction workers who install energy efficient windows as having green jobs, but not those who put in regular windows. Plumbers who install “Lo-Flo” toilets have green jobs, but not plumbers who put in regular fixtures.
Perhaps more distressing,
the largest number of green jobs, 886,000, or 26% of total, are in the federal, state, and local governments. This is a decline of 15,000 from 2010, when government was responsible for 28% of green jobs. It takes a quarter of the green jobs work force to pass green jobs laws, write the regulations, and enforce them.
In other words, a large percentage of the “green” workers are simply bureaucrats.
Despite the promises of the Obama Administration, “investment” in “green” technologies has been a massive waste of taxpayer money. The result has not been a revolution in “green” jobs; however, the result has been revolting.