Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
This story is from the “you can’t make this stuff up” file. Some of our British cousins have figured out a way to solve it all. They have set up the One Million Jobs Caravan, as part of a “Campaign Against Climate Change” … I’m not sure how they plan to stop the climate from changing, but apparently it takes a million people to do it. To fight against CO2 emissions, the backers plan to get into fossil-fueled vehicles and drive, the lot of them, from city to city all around England and Scotland. And then back again.
Now, the numbers out of Spain have shown that for every green job created, two regular jobs were destroyed. And the “green jobs” campaign in the US has been a resounding failure. So I was quite curious as to just how these green jobs were going to be created. I also wondered about the involvement of the trade unions called the CWU, the UCU, and the like.
I found out the campaign backers were proposing to create the jobs the old-fashioned way …
… I cannot improve on their own words …
… the mind boggles … the solution to the UK economic crisis, and the way to end the persistent nuisance of the climate inconsiderately changing all the time, is to add a million “secure, flexible, permanent” union workers building wind farms to the UK government’s permanent welfare rolls.
These folks would be funny if they weren’t so dangerous.
Meanwhile, here in California we just found out that we’re unexpectedly $16,000,000,000 dollars in the hole in this year’s budget, from things like paying union teachers and state bureaucrats and functionaries princely salaries while they are working and then paying them very large pensions for the rest of their lives. Oh, and did I mention business-unfriendly? Eighth year in a row, California was voted worst state to do business in by a poll of CEOs …
However, I hear that there is budgetary hope regarding the California Department of Transportation, which maintains the roads. It seems that they’ve invented a machine that can idly lean on a shovel, promising big savings in labor costs, which is good news … bad news is, I hear the machines have already formed the MWU, the Machine Workers Union, and they’ve stopped leaning on their shovels and joined the One Million Jobs Caravan …
w.
When the wagon is in the ditch, shoot the horses and hire more drivers.
One day our children, or out children’s children, will look back with a little pride at the fact that CAGW sceptics stayed online and kept active. Hats off to WUWT, Climate Audit et. al.
When is this SCAM going to end? How many times does Flannery have to be proven wrong? How many more LIES do we need to hear from Gore and Pacharui? How many more past temperature adjustments do we need from the astronomer James Hansen? How many more times do will we hear of an ice free Arctic next year?
The CAUSE is lost, they cannot win, even at the end of the “hottest decade on the record”!
Finally, I just want Warmists to think honestly about just three things:
Whatever happened to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming?
Whatever happened to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Runaway Global Warming?
Why Climate Change? (it is in the very nature of climate to change)
A million workers at–let’s say–$40,000 or equivalent each: that’s $40,000,000,000 (forty billion dollars) in salary alone. How many people live in the UK? Divide that $40B by the number of families that get the bill; add in the health care and other benefits and perquisites of all these million jobs; and let us know in a few years how long the UK can remain solvent.
In the picture, what is that green thing that woman is holding? Is that a watermelon?
I am sorry, and I will understand if you moderate this post. But I have to say it:
Spending tax payer money to build stuff that won’t work is a travesty. These people, when they get access to the public checking account simply do not know how wealth is created.
But doing what they suggest would have been a good alternative to the stimulus.
It ain’t gonna happen—- is it?????
“We mean government jobs! This is a new idea!”
New Idea??? Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clintoon, and Barack Obama would all contest the ‘new idea’ meme!
On the flip side, What could go wrong? It ‘worked’ soooooo well for Comrade Stalin and the Soviet Union, as well as Chairman Mao and communist China?! Right?
I see brain dead people….and they don’t even know they’re brain dead….
Sooner or later there are going to be more government employees (Blood suckers) that there are workers and the whole Ponsi scheme will collapse. We seem to be at that point already.
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. ” ― Margaret Thatcher
This economic model has been tried before.
It’s called Greece.
Every few generations, you just default on your national debt and start all over again.
Not to worry. The EU is imploding as we speak, with the prospect of civil wars in the near future. All this kind of nonsense will evaporate soon as reality steps in.
Growlzler says:
May 14, 2012 at 5:43 pm
Indeed I was, Growlzler, indeed I was, but look at the age of the folks in the photo … lots of grey hair and graybeards …
w.
Dr. John M. Ware says:
May 14, 2012 at 6:09 pm
In rough numbers, there’s about thirty million employed adults in the UK. About a third, or ten million, are already employed by the government.
SO … assuming that the jobs will cost $40,000 per year, and knowing that there are about twenty million private sector workers, that means each private sector worker will have to pay about $2,000 in taxes to support the permanent unionized government windmill builders.
Plus their pensions, of course and various benefits, that’s gotta add maybe 20% to that, call it $2,400 in increased taxes per worker.
Of course, that million new workers will require at least a tenth of that number of bureaucrats to take care of the new million workers … so call it $2,500 in taxes annually to make this happen, from each private sector worker. $5,000 per family if both people work …
My rule of thumb is that everything takes longer and costs more … even if you take my rule of thumb into account. So we’re likely up to $3,000 per person, $6,000 per working couple.
All of this, of course, has ignored one question—who will pay for the windmills and the insulation for the homes? Oh, right, I remember now, the taxpayer. Call that another $500 per taxpayer, we’re up to $3,500 per taxpayer, $7,000 per working couple …
These folks have never learned the most basic rule of economics. There are only three ways to create wealth—mine it, grow it, or manufacture it.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
May 14, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Growlzler says:
May 14, 2012 at 5:43 pm
I suspect that even you, Willis, were once young, unsuspecting, naive and unaware of the ways of the World. …
Indeed I was, Growlzler, indeed I was, but look at the age of the folks in the photo … lots of grey hair and graybeards …
w.
*
Yeah, I noticed that, too. These are not wet behind the ears youngsters with dreams. Maybe they are actors, hired to inspire folk to “Get out there and Do”. I’m wondering about their plan, though. Nevermind their wages, who pays for the renovations? They want to fix up all the houses, right? Street by street? Even if it worked, it would take a lot of time, but of course it can’t work – I just can’t see them escaping the first street they try it in.
It’s getting so bad we really need Jesus to come back or at least aliens to land here…
The government should just give ever one a job. How cruel it is that they don’t. It should be a good paying job, too; with great benefits, like politicians get. It is only fair and humane. I don’t understand you haters out there who are making fun of this. In fact, they should just pay everyone to do nothing. It is so cruel to ask people to toil all day. And they should make every one a lot more attractive. And we should all be able to fly. That would be cool. And breath under water, and go to Mars if we want.
We woulda have all that, if it wasn’t for evil corporations.
s a r c/off
YES YES YES I love socialism, see anything is possible. Lets employ one more million public workers.. Already 54% of the UK GDP is from the public purse. Add a few more % will not hurt. We can just borrow till the cows come home. A little birdie in the sky says it is ok.
Dr. John M. Ware says:
May 14, 2012 at 6:09 pm
Ah, but I have a solution for the intrepid climateers!
They need to take their climate caravan to Climate Mountain, where the magic climate money trees grow. They can take carbon-neutral baskets and fill them to the brim with climate ca$h – enough for a million jobs!! They can then return to the villages and bless the common folks with sustainable government green jobs. Oh, how glorious! How green! I mean, it’s so good, I must be dreaming…let me pinch myself (ouch!)…
Steve in SC
May 14, 2012 at 6:03 pm
When the wagon is in the ditch, shoot the horses and hire more drivers.
###
Thanks for such a wonderful allegory! My roommates loved it also.
As sad as it is that there are people like that in control of our society, what is really sad is that about half or maybe more of all human beings seem to hold what they consider to be a more moderate version of these beliefs. Left-wing parties win elections OFTEN and even “fiscal conservative” parties are mostly self-identified as fiscal conservatives rather than objectively identifiable as such. Yes, we can blame the leftist media and the leftist education system but in the end we have to lay the blame on human nature. All of the evidence of socialism’s failures is accessible to almost all of the world but humans want power or to be aligned with power (the alpha dogs) and want to think their actions are motivated by compassion. Socialism gives the illusion of both so it is the perfect drug for the human psyche.
OT – LOL
Europe’s manufacturers are rapidly losing ground to US rivals because of soaring energy costs and the failure of the continent’s governments to be “rational” about nuclear power and shale gas, the head of one of the world’s biggest chemicals groups has warned. In an interview with the Financial Times, Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, warned that energy costs should be ranked alongside the eurozone crisis as the most urgent problem confronting industry. –James Boxell, Financial Times, 14 May 2012
I wonder why Governor Jerry Brown didn’t think of it as a way to help California out of their little problem.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/12/california-facing-higher-16-billion-shortfall/
Or Greece?
Just keep hiring 1000s of government workers until everyone and everything is OK.
It’s fool proof. The government can print all the money needed for it, the workers spend it back into the economy and much of it comes back in paid taxes.
It’s spontaneous utopia.
If some of the workers were assigned to take care of my huge yard for free I’d be all for it.
OK – Here is the plan. We build factory size gyms across all UK cities each equipped with 1000 cycle machines hooked up to the national grid. A top cyclist can reach 1000 watts output so let’s assume about 200 watts for normal people. So working in 3 shifts our miillion climate change heroes can supply about 70 Megawatts of renewable energy ! They can be paid in carbon credits. This might also help cure UKs obesity problem and save the health service millions. 🙂
Before the system can really collapse, several states will default, receive big aid and loan packages at the expense of those which have not collapsed yet. Some of them may even make a short comeback, or an apparent comeback before collapsing again. It is not when there are too few rich people to fund the scheme that it fails. It’s when there are too few rich nations to bail each other out that it will finally stop. Socialism can destroy any type of wealth it can get it’s hands on so it is literally when all wealth is destroyed that this plague dies out. I’m not looking forward to that very much though.
Tim Minchin says:
Economics should be mandatory in high school all the way to matriculation. How can these people be so stupid?
The folks who dreamed this up are probably graduates of the London School Economics (LSE)!
What bugs me is that there are evidently so many “progressive” libtards that actually believe that the government has an unlimited supply of money to dole out to everyone, irregardless of the state of the economy. Do they not realize that their future (like, uh, their pension) is totally dependent on the health of the economy (and the 1%)? How can so many people be so damn stuuuupid?
I feel guilty feeling happy that California will be our Greece.