Regulating to Disaster

What is a ?green job” anyway? Few can adequately define one. Even the government isn’t sure, you will learn in these pages. 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.

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.

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. 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 in no shape to absorb them.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a MarketWatch columnist, a contributing editor of RealClearMarkets.com, and a monthly columnist for Tax Notes. From 2001 to 2002 Ms. Furchtgott-Roth served as chief of staff of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. She also served as deputy executive secretary of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House under President George H.W. Bush and as an economist on the staff of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, who has degrees in economics from Swarthmore College and Oxford University, lives in Maryland with her husband Harold. They have six children and two dogs.