On June 23, 2012, Ezra Levant writes in the Toronto Sun about what he says is a shocking new study by the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows the Obama administration’s $9-billion solar power program created just 910 long-term jobs.
That’s $9.8 million per job created.
Even if you add in all possible “indirect” jobs that could be attributed to this subsidy flurry, it still works out to $1.63 million in subsidies per job created, according to the report.
Just to be clear, this isn’t some taxpayers federation or Republican Party group writing this scathing review. This is the U.S. government itself.
That $9 billion was taxpayers’ money — wrung out of the hides of Americans with real jobs. Or, to be more accurate, it was borrowed by Obama, from the Chinese government, and will hang around the neck of taxpaying Americans like an unpaid $9-billion credit card debt.
How many jobs will that kill?
Why are Obama’s fake jobs — in counterfeit industries, like solar power and wind power, that could not exist without handouts — more important than real jobs for which there is a real demand in the economy?
Why do people who have modest real jobs — not ones that cost $1.63 million in subsidies to prop up, but ones that maybe eke out $50,000 a year in profit — have to carry these fake solar jobs on their backs?
And could there possibly be a stupider thing to do to your own country in the middle of the deepest and most prolonged recession since the 1930s?
The solar panels and wind turbines built with this $9-billion slush fund are probably still operating. That’s not to say they’re doing any good — even when wind turbines are working as planned, they don’t replace coal or nuclear or hydroelectric power plants. Each of those need to be kept because wind turbines just don’t work when it’s not windy. And even when the wind picks up, you can’t just “shut down” a coal-fired power plant for an hour or two.
The whole concept is counterfeit.
