Regulating to Disaster How Green Jobs Policies Are Damaging America's Economy

What is a “green job” anyway? Few can adequately define one. Even the government isn’t sure, you will learn in these pages. But this much is certain: Green jobs are the most recent reappearance of a perennial bad idea—government regulation of certain industries, designed to anoint winners and losers in the marketplace.

Electric cars, solar energy, wind farms, biofuels: President Obama’s insistence on these dubious pursuits ultimately hamstrings American businesses not deemed green enough, and squeezes struggling households with regulations. Adding insult to injury: the technology subsidies Americans pay for solar panels, wind turbines, and electric batteries really help create manufacturing jobs in China and South Korea.

Still, President Obama and environmentalist coalitions such as the BlueGreen Alliance claim the creation of green jobs can save America’s economy, and are worth taxpayers’ investment.

But in Regulating to Disaster, Diana Furchtgott-Roth debunks that myth. Instead, energy prices rise dramatically and America’s economic growth and employment rate suffer – in some states much more than others -- when government invests in nonviable ventures such as the bankrupted Solyndra, which the Obama Administration propped up far too long.

Regulating to Disaster reveals the powerful nexus of union leaders, environmentalists, and lobbyists who dreamed up these hoaxes, and benefit politically and financially from green jobs policies. Unfortunately, there are more Solyndras on the horizon, and our economy is no shape to absorb them.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She is a contributing editor of RealClearMarkets.com, and a columnist for the Washington Examiner, MarketWatch.com, and Tax Notes. From 2003 to 2005, Ms. Furchtgott-Roth was chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor. From 2001 to 2002 she served as chief of staff of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. Ms. Furchtgott-Roth served as deputy executive director of the Domestic Policy Council and associate director of the Office of Policy Planning in the White House under President George H.W. Bush from 1991 to 1993, and she was an economist on the staff of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1986 to 1987.

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REVIEWS

Stimulated by Solyndra?, National Review Online, September 13, 2012
Recycling to Nowhere, The Weekly Standard, August 27, 2012