When "Green jobs" don't produce the green.

Still think the government can run the economy better than those rascally capitalists? Well, a couple of years ago the President and his party opted to stimulate the economy with $800 billion borrowed from China that your kids and grand kids will have to pay for. Included in that package was a mere $90 billion for so called "green" jobs. At that time the President boasted that this package would produce 200,000 jobs annually over the next 3 years. Three years later... let's revue.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, that $90 billion has produced 16,000 jobs since its inception at a cost of... (drum roll) $5 million per job. According to my calculator, that means 584,000 less jobs that promised. And at $5 million a job - hardly cost beneficial. But the government can afford to waste our money in such a manner because it cost them nothing. They'll just add it to our tab which currently is approaching $16 trillion.

In the real world where those evil, dastardly capitalists live - you can't afford to blow $90 billion and then tell the stockholders; "Hey, at least we tried".  Yet that is exactly what the President and his party want to tell us. Besides $90 billion is only a small fraction of the $800 billion stimulus package. Kinda' make you wonder how they pissed away the other $710 billion, doesn't it? Considering how much we had to borrow for this fiasco, you'd think we'd be seeing better results. But we aren't and here's why.

First. Economics 101: Governments can't create jobs or wealth.
Economic growth is created when investors risk capital in a venture. If it succeeds, they make a profit... eventually. They hire people to work in this venture. Those people use their income to buy goods and services from other workers who produce other things. All these workers pay taxes. The government uses those taxes to (hopefully) run necessary elements of the government. (Have you noticed that so far the government hasn't done shit in this success story. Good. You're catching on) The government can help facilitate this process by keeping the tax burden on both the company and workers low. But when the government promises more and more entitlements that it can't afford - they have to increase taxes. This robs both the investors and the workers of capital they could better spend elsewhere - like buying goods and services from other workers which keeps this whole scenario rolling.

When the government decides who will be the recipient of the D.C. cash cow, we get things like Solyndra, the solar panel company that Obama gave $550 million which went bankrupt. (Another half-a-billion dollars lost) When you add a billion here and a billion there, it starts to add up to real money! The government cannot create winners and losers. That's what the free market is for and it works quite well. If Solyndra had been such a great offering, why weren't there hundreds if not thousands of private investors lining up to invest their money? Hmmm. Maybe they know something that those brainiac politicians don't.

I'm something of an amateur American historian. And having read the words of our founders, I can tell you they never envisioned a federal government with such sweeping powers and debt. In fact, Jefferson (Tom not George) said that every generation owed the following generation a government without debt to inherit. One can only imagine how he would grasp that 16 trillion number. I've been hearing about the savior of green energy since I was 10 years old. In the decades that followed, that cheap, free energy source we've been promised is neither cheap or free. And is incapable of sustaining itself without government money. Even GM (the recipient of a government bailout) ceased production of its flagship eco-car the Chevy Volt because demand was non-existent even with $4.00 a gallon gas.

I don't doubt that one day our cars will be propelled by non-polluting and plentiful sunshine and lolly pops. But that day is not coming upon us anytime soon. Till then, we better start a real national energy policy that includes drilling here as well as developing new sources of energy. And it can all be done without Washington's involvement and our money. In 1977, President Carter started the Energy Department. Since then, the cost of energy has skyrocketed and no solutions have been developed or enacted. Yet this department  has grown in personnel and budget by 500%. If this was a company - any company, it would have and should have folded decades ago. But don't worry. If we run out of money, we can just borrow more. What's another trillion between the generations anyway.