The American Spectator

Yeah. That’s it.

As the FT reports today, the EU is still demanding that it’s not fair that the U.S. not do the same harm to ourselves that they did to themselves, and can’t undo. Only they’ve tweaked their rationale slightly for why we should hobble ourselves and, effectively, commit to buying their stuff to bail out their bubble industries (see those billions in ‘stimulus’ money going to Iberdrola et al.). That whole end is nigh business is just so pre-ClimateGate. Now it is that we will fall behind economically if we don’t.

Because, you see, politicians know much better what’s in businesses’ interests than business. At least, they know what’s in the best interests of the businesses they decided would be their ‘national champion’ industries. And they persist in believing that economic growth and wealth creation come from government and politicians. Recall the Varvel cartoon of Obama knitting a blanket with ‘Jobs’ on it with the yarn unraveling a shirt worn by a workman behind him? That understates things. The yarn actuallly shrinks in the transfer. This is even more true with clean energy jobs’ because they mean higher energy prices.

The ‘green economy’ did not work out well in Europe.  Obama no longer points to those faux success stories. This is not because of the recession, and in fact this newfangled central planning killed jobs and contributed mightily to Europe’s debt crisis.

Like Michael Boskin’s anti-stimulus piece in WSJ today, the EU experiment offers a strong argument against the ‘green economy’. ‘Green economy’ is ‘stimulus’ redux, similar in that much of it goes overseas, with a nearly imperceptible near-term boost from temporary, debt-financed jobs in aid-dependent industries created at great per-job cost and killing other jobs.

Other than that, you’re doing a heckuva job, Europe. Thanks for reminding us that when the reason (‘excuse’) for doing something is oft-changing, there’s probably not a good reason for doing it.