Reliance on Green Jobs Running in the Red

When President Reagan spoke of re-igniting the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people he understood that for the market to work, the market must be free to work for itself. This is something President Obama has yet to understand.

In a speech on Friday, the President vowed to commit more money to the creation of Green and clean energy jobs. Here in Michigan, Governor Jennifer Granholm has made similar pledges, along with her commitment to promote the movie industry and other targeted markets. Both of these stances betray an ignorance of how jobs are created and the essence of entrepreneurial enterprise.

Economists and investors, people who devote their lives to predicting the changing course of a market, consider 50/50 good odds when trying to foresee coming trends, and more often than not, fail. The President’s (and Governor Granholm’s) insistence on targeted growth of a specific market for political gain is almost sure to fail. And may it well hurt us in the long run. By artificially propping up the clean energy industry they almost guarantee a growth bubble in it, and unless the market can catch up, once those supports are removed it will collapse.

To ensure job growth in the new year, it would be far better to reexamine these policies, and focus on broader incentives to support new industries which may not be predictable. Most of the technology we take for granted today was unimaginable twenty years ago, and now generates billions of dollars of revenue and employs millions of Americans. Instead of trying to impose growth in an industry that is still emerging and many are unsure of, why not open the floodgates with incentives for new business start-ups such as tax breaks or government backed small business loans? Had the billions of dollars wasted this year been directed toward existing and potential small business owners we could have already seen an emergence of those industries which could take the place of the ones now disappearing.

The President’s obsession with green jobs betrays not only an ignorance of economic principles, it demonstrates a lack of confidence in the will, drive and entrepreneurial genius of the American people.