Tim gets very cross when people cite job creation as a benefit of a scheme. Here. for example, in response to a:
study by Friends of the Earth [that] said 51,400 jobs could be created if 70% of waste collected by local councils were recycled.
Tim’s argument is that jobs are a cost, not a benefit., and that’s true. But is it more than half true? All transactions have two sides. If I sell you some widgets, the widgets are a cost for you, but a source of revenue, a benefit, to me. Jobs are a cost to the employer but a benefit to the employee. They’re also a benefit to the businesses the employee can now buy stuff from. It depends which direction you view the transaction from.
Tim goes on:
Turning half a million Europeans into rag and bone men means half a million Europeans who are not tending babies, curing cancer of protesting against unsustainable consumption.
Which is only true if employment is zero-sum, if a job created here means a job lost there, and I don’t think this is the case. I’ve no idea how you would be able to measure this (opportunity cost) effectively even if you wanted to, though I am aware people have tried. To be clear, for all I know you lose two free-market jobs for every one created by a scheme like this. Or maybe you lose one for every two. I don’t think anyone really knows.
It’s a given that reports issued by Friends of the Earth are likely to be cretinous, but I think when they say jobs are a benefit they mean from the employee’s point of view and not that of the employer, and that’s fair enough. What they don’t seem to try to assess is the cost of taking money from economically viable activities and pouring it into unsustainable ones, with all the attendant losses of growth, competitiveness and development that entails.
And that’s an enjoyable irony: the prophets of sustainability trumpet unsustainable ideas without exception – their ideas can’t be sustained without subsidy.
