Are Green Jobs Really Job Killers?
Here’s an article that describes “green jobs as the new job killer in America.” The logic is summarized in this piece of journalistic drivel:
When large utility companies implement systems like smart meters, meter readers have nothing to do, no job, no need for their skill. The job of 100 meter readers can be handled by one guy – the one who presses restart with a computer mouse. So what do we do with the other 99 workers? The smart grid could be the dumbest thing to do – if you are a member of a trade union in the utility industry.
Holy cow. I’m always amazed when I see this type of stupidity parading as reporting. We’re supposed to keep people doing jobs that technology has made obsolete? And that will keep America competitive?
In the 19th Century, people made paperclips by hand, one at a time, with a pair of pliers. I guess one could argue that this business model shouldn’t have been scuttled when that manufacturing process was automated, and that we’d still have those jobs — except for the minor detail that they’d pay (according to my calculations) in the neighborhood of $0.000012 per hour.
The introduction of technology – in any century – makes certain jobs obsolete while it opens the door to others. If the author had no ax to grind in writing this article; if she (“Charlene on Green”) had spent 15 minutes researching the type and number of new jobs created in replacing 20th Century energy and transportation with 21st Century stuff, I have to think this could have been a more fair-minded and less idiotic piece.
