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So not heard of Bastiat then Geoffrey?

All the major parties are signed up to transforming Britain into a green, low-carbon economy to boost growth, as well as to combat climate change.

It\’s this \”boosting growth\” bit.

OK, in the depths of a recession I\’ll concede that putting manpower to work on something useful will increase growth.

But as a general rule going over here to do this doesn\’t boost growth. Because by doing so you\’re taking resources from over there which were going to be used, could be used, to do that.

Only if this produces more growth than that can it be said that you\’ve produced more growth. And that depends upon the relative efficiency with which you\’re using those resources.

Given that just about every green plan is less efficient than non green plans (they cost more so they must be*) going green is actually a way of reducing economic growth, not increasing it.

*Yes, I know, externalities. But we don\’t include them when we\’re measuring economic growth, do we? Even if we ought to, we don\’t.

3 thoughts on “So not heard of Bastiat then Geoffrey?”

  1. Tim, you’re dead right but it will have no effect as Geoffrey doesnt live in the real world.

    He lives in the glorious wonderland beloved by ecochondriacs across the globe where untouched virgin forests cloth the land, unicorns gallop along woodland tracks and fairies dance among magic circles in sunlit forest glades before giant handcarved statues of the Green God wreathed in sweet smelling spring flowers all through the year. There’s a magic money tree outside every forest bower that has an endless supply of other people’s money to keep the whole dream rolling along.

    Economics, efficiency, costs, personal choice, independence and real science are all alien concepts in his world.

  2. externalities are a bullshit concept.if they could be honestly priced they would be .since they can’t they ai’nt.

  3. Investigation of the Spanish “Green” subsidies showed that for every job produced 2.2 were destroyed. Thus if Gordon, Nick or Dave promise to create “100,000” Green jiobs the truth is that they know they are deliberately desatroying 220,000 jobs. They would be saying that if they were something other than totally corrupt, lying, thieving, fascist fraudsters but then we already knew that.

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