We're Ruled By - Well, No, Not Dullards, They're Ignorant

Come on people, jobs are a cost

Aren’t we the lucky ones? So, yes, we’ve had a change of government. That means a different lot are now in charge of pissing our money up against the wall. We might hope that it’s a better group but that doesn’t seem to have happened. For here’s Sarah Jones, Minister for Industry and Decarbonisation.

“So, if you look around the world, right now, there are countries in a race for who is going to provide the jobs of the future.”

‘Green energies are going to provide jobs for the countries that get it right!’

One thought about this is that they’re just building that Great British Energy thing. As Miliboy keeps saying, we’re going to provide all our energy here at home. So, you know, we’re not in an international race about anything, are we? We’re doing import substitution in order not to be in an international race about bugger all.

But far worse is this worse than dullardry, it’s the ignorance about jobs.

As I keep saying jobs are a cost not a benefit. We do not want to go around the world - or even our own country - creating costs now, do we?

No, no, jobs really are a cost, they are not a benefit. Think on it. We have some amount of human labour available to us. So, if we use that labour to do this thing here then we cannot use it to do this other thing over there. The cost to us of using the labour to do this thing is therefore losing the opportunity to do that other thing over there.

Yes, I know, people like to be able to consume. For most of us that means having an income with which we can purchase our consumption. But even to us that job is a cost. The work we’ve got to do is the cost of gaining the income. And, obviously, a job is a cost to the employer - the production is what they desire, the job is a cost of gaining it.

It’s entirely true that renewables require more human labour than other forms of energy collection and or generation. But that means they make us *poorer*.

It’s entirely true that solar power creates more jobs than nuclear per GWh of ‘leccie produced. The GWh is worth the same from either source, though, and solar requires more human labour — that’s the same statement as “creates more jobs” — so therefore solar power lowers measured productivity.

For productivity is:

Let’s start again with that definition of productivity, by which everyone means labour productivity: GDP/labour hours. That’s it — that’s all it is. It’s a very simple calculation. We know, or at least the Office for National Statistics knows, how many (legal) hours of work there were last year. HMRC can tell them. ONS also calculates GDP. That measure has its own many problems, but it is what it is.

So we’ve people running around wibbling about how we’ve got to increase British productivity (hey, great idea!) and also insisting that we’ve got to create more jobs in renewables. Even, that renewables will be great because more jobs and so lower productivity and we’re all poorer.

So, new fools pissing our money up the wall. Yipee, eh?

Which leads to the big question - is that headline right? Is it because they’re dullards and so incapable of thinking or is it because they’re just plain flat out ignorant?