GREEN. More Jobs? Less Jobs? More Red? | iCapitalMarketing.com

GREEN. More Jobs? Less Jobs? More Red?

If you are all GREEN'd out with the GREEN theme, and the word GREEN, then you may want to quietly back your GREEN hybrid out of here, because we are talking GREEN! Oh wait, you are an average American in the median income range of around $24,000 (BLS) and you cannot afford a hybrid, never mind, you are staying. Sorry, more GREEN to brighten your day.

The point of this article, since having a legitimate point is always good, is to look into whether the GREEN theme is going to translate into any jobs for you, or will it just mean less GREEN in your pocket due to significantly hire energy costs, efficient vehicles you cannot afford, more burdensome regulations and controls on businesses (you know, those evil entities that employ people), less hiring, less money for people to afford higher education, less economic growth, etc.

What made me think of this was the green marketers. I had to do the double take to make sure, but I believe I just saw a TV commercial about a bank, not just any bank, but a green bank. A green bank. Is it green with money? Not sure, just know that of all of the things it could say about itself, it has chosen the green theme. What does that mean anyway? I think they are trying to say they are green because they are using less paper. How original. Haven't banks been trying to eliminate paper for years. Why? Because of their greenness? No, it saves money.

As I invest 2.5 seconds of thought on it, I sincerely could not put the green factor any further down the list of important criteria when considering a bank. Yep, it is dead last. Tell me about about three things in a commercial, price, quantity, and quality, and maybe I will stop in for some free checking. Wait, isn't all checking free? Shouldn't they be promoting no checking because of the paper? I don't know. I get confused sometimes. By the way, does anyone actually use checks anymore? It is not like the good old college days when floating one could get you through a weekend. Sorry for the digression.

Let's just all agree so we can move on to the topic at hand. I'm green. You're green. Company's are green. We're all green. We love green. Green is good. Chemical companies are even green, video games are probably green, plastic must now be green, etc. Another guess, but I am fairly confident with this one, is that the average American (the ones trying to make ends meet) don't give one rat’s behind whether a company or product is supposedly green. I just do not think most really care that much, especially to the extent that they are willing to sacrifice any portion of their standard of living, if they even have one, so they can be all things green. I think the marketers have way overestimated this one, and green now is a political topic. There is one thing that does not match well with smart business practices, mixing in politics. You need to market to all people to be successful, not half of them.

Sure, nobody is for needlessly littering, and there will be some faction of the population that buys green because their identity is wrapped up in being green, but for the most part, I just don't think people are buying into what's being sold with regard to the impending end of our 4,500,000,000,000 year old earth. Sorry if I'm missing a zero or 10. That's 4.5 billion if you want to compare that to the five to 10 years of highly disputed and incomplete environmental data that seems to be released every half hour.

Back on point. Does green mean jobs? My first thought is of people sanding windmill arms, filling batteries with green acid, installing solar panels on celebrity's homes, a switch operator at old faithful harvesting geothermal, driving buses and trains because no one can afford cars, driving a combine to get some more product for that new corn fuel idear, writing articles for an activist org looking for a little more green, or passing out oxygen tanks to the coal miners on their way down. You know, I still can't figure out if coal is supposed to be green. It must be. They have a clean coal commercial saying they are. I think I may have heard it too from one of those highly objective and balanced fact check companies.

If you are not aware, all of the energy ideas you are hearing about today, like they are new, have been around for a very long time. Photovoltaic's/Solar Cells? Geothermal? Wind Energy? Corn? Battery powered cars? These all go way back. What didn't seem to happen then, and what doesn't seem to be happening now, is more jobs. We live in a semi-free marketplace. The consumer dictates what gets produced and what gets bought. Products can't be slammed down a person's throat if the perceived value isn't there.

We need real life examples to remain objective, so let's look at everyone's favorite example for everything good, Denmark, and see if going green has meant new jobs. After implementing carbon taxes / cap and trade, manufacturing shrunk 25% (government statistics). I don't think it takes a Harvard MBA to know that if you burden businesses financially, and needlessly, they will pass this along to their customers in the way of higher prices, cutbacks, and less hiring.

Denmark has an even bigger problem that its government acknowledges. Young workers, motivated by more than a desire to subsist in life, are fleeing Denmark in droves to lands of lower taxes and greater opportunity, no easy thing to find in EU. Denmark has up to a 63 percent marginal income tax rate for their motivated folks to enjoy. That is the highest tax-to-GDP ratio in the world. I am sure Denmark is a very lovely place in many regards, but an economic world powerhouse raising the standard of living of it's citizens, and for the world to emulate, is not really debatable. So, for Denmark's green implementations, unless you count more government workers processing unemployment claims, it seems green has not meant more jobs.

I can't finish without briefly mentioning, and we will talk later about fixing and capping pay since it is now starting to happen in the U.S., but Denmark's doctors are on fixed incomes. A fixed income doctor. I'll let you work that one out, but will say that this is an interesting way to reward the brightest minds as they often accumulate hundreds of thousands in debt and stay in school for many years. But hey, they have an easy job and they don't really serve any meaningful purpose, right?

If you can enlighten us as to what we all may be missing with the green jobs creation movement, please do so. We are all for more good quality sustainable jobs. Is anyone else sick of that word?

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