The writer makes a subtle, but profoundly significant point. He notes that the infrastructure plan won’t create jobs in excess of the employment rate. The observation merits contemplation.
How Many Jobs Would Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Create? Zero
Published
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
It’s worse than that. While it is painfully obvious that you can’t ‘create’ jobs during periods of full employment, what is ignored by the media is that Biden’s plan would destroy high paying jobs and replace them with jobs no better than current unemployment benefits.
The average “green energy” job pays about $32K, which is less than the entry level(roustabout) oilfield job at $35K and less than half the average oilfield job.
Daycare jobs and such pay even less.
Current unemployment benefits depending on state run about $32K, so there is little point in going back to work, and millions of available jobs remain unfilled.
Command economies are never prosperous and when they are run by people who have never held a real job, they care catastrophic.
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This cite seems to contradict your assertions of green v. fossil fuel jobs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimmagill/2020/10/26/oil-gas-vs-clean-energy-which-will-have-best-jobs-in-the-future/?sh=448229eb5738
Plus there has always been the boom-bust oil business dependent upon a very unstable market affected by geopolitical forces. The article points this out.
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The Forbes article is a fantasy by an advocacy group. Read the underlying study and its methodology
Click to access Clean-Jobs-Better-Jobs.-October-2020.-E2-ACORE-CELI.pdf
and you will see a great deal of speculation about what wages might be as a rsult of unionization.
But see table 3 about what wages actually are.
It is true that the oil industry has a history of boom and bust. That’s why I live here, but that volatility is entirely the result of government meddling in the market. The bust that brought me here was caused by Jimmy Carter’s idiotic fuel use act. Oilfield workers right now are suffering from Biden’s meddling.
But the problem isn’t the industry, which provides us with products we need and want, it is the government trying to slay imaginary monsters by putting hard working people out of work and onto poverty.
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About a $2.00/hour difference, but hardly poverty wages for either green or fossil.
And the fossil numbers are bumped by union wages is some coal sectors as well as the boom wages in NG. And coal is dying a market related death except for steel production.
So we are not trading $24/hour for minimum wage. Not even close.
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RE: “It’s worse than that.”
Yes, it is. During periods of full employment, a government-created job can only come at the expense of a private sector job. Since private sector jobs are almost by definition productive, there should be a very good reason for destroying them.
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Even Keynes knew that.
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I came across an interesting comment on Keynes yesterday. The commenter noted that Keynes’s General Theory was predicated on his belief that modern industry would eliminate scarcity. In the long run, we’ll all be fat.
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…”we’ll all be fat.”
Haven’t you seen the reports of obesity in this country? We may be there already.
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It is beyond obvious that the number of jobs is capped by the number of people wanting to have a job (or two, or three).
The challenge is keeping up with disappearing jobs. Between technological advances and new ways of working forced by the pandemic that is a MAJOR challenge.
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RE: “It is beyond obvious that the number of jobs is capped by the number of people wanting to have a job (or two, or three).”
Beyond obvious, maybe, but also beyond relevance. Employers create the demand for employment, not employees.
RE: “The challenge is keeping up with disappearing jobs.”
Nope. Since every producer is also a consumer, there is a natural tendency for full employment. The challenge you are worried about only arises under central management of an economy.
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“Nope. Since every producer is also a consumer, there is a natural tendency for full employment. The challenge you are worried about only arises under central management of an economy.”
There is no arguing with logical, economic or historical nonsense. And this is total nonsense.
When a fast food outlet replaces 20 counter employees with touch screens or AI robots those are disappearing jobs. When 200,000 fast food restaurants do the same – as they surely will – that will make literally millions of jobs disappear. Fast foods is only a minor example of how this trend is developing. One of the best paying jobs out there for people with little education is truck driving. Those 4 million good paying jobs are ALL at risk. Countless other industries are having the same issues.
In short, disappearing jobs IS a MAJOR challenge and it has nothing to do with central management of the economy.
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You present the Luddite Fallacy as if it were sound economic reasoning. A better example of nonsense would be impossible to imagine.
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The writer is entitled to his opinion. He is also entitled to be called a partisan hack who is probabaly eating dinner out every night funded by the fossil fuel industry and htose who think climate change is a hoax and not that big of a deal.
People on this forum take great pride in pointing out that those who want to transform our energy sources to cleaner and more sustainable are ding it for their own benefit.
TO quote Col Potter, “Horse Hockey!”
The fossil fuel hacks are doing the same damned thing. It just depends on which truth you believe.
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I think what is pointed out is that green is unreliable while fossil is very reliable. Trying to sell unreliable by claiming it will employ the US with high paying jobs is part of the green snake oil con job that green can be the primary supplier of our energy needs. I believe Potter called that Horse Feathers.
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Snake oil is right. If climate change was the real reason for government spending to transition away from fossil fuels, the money would go to nuclear power or space-based solar power.
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Especially Nuclear!!
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Green’s reliability is not as questionable as you have been fed to believe. Fossil fuel is filthy and doing great damage to the ecological systems in the world. We can burn fossil fuels til we burn down the planet, or we can transition, develop better and newer technologies and live a few thousand years, vice hundreds, more.
And the newer nuke tech that Don has talked about in the past SHOULD be part of the equation.
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So we are clear, I am “fed” nothing. I do my own research and draw conc lusions based on my research. I specifically shut off all MSM because I got tired of the left wing cheerleading squad and the “hey, look at the shiny new object, we need to spend trillions of rich people’s money on this” mentality of it. Never took to Fox either so accusing me of such to act superior only makes you a laughable fool.
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“I do my own research and draw conc lusions based on my research.”
Then maybe you should widen your research sources and stop reading fossil fuel funded research.
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“Never took to Fox either so accusing me of such to act superior only makes you a laughable fool.”
Laughing fool. I never mentioned the T**** News Network. (Apologies to Ted Turner)
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RE: “The writer is entitled to his opinion.”
The writer is an economist. His observation is not an opinion so much as it is a reflection of mainstream economics.
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It’s an opinion. Period. Based on his idea of economics of which there are many competing theories. It feeds your preconceived notion so you buy it.
And mainstream is in the eye of the beholder.
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Everything is relative, I guess, even in the Land of Fools.
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“Land of Fools”
Now I know how to address snail mail to you.
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