Michael Giberson
Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), co-sponsor of the proposed Clean Energy Tax Stimulus Act, says if Congress and the President don’t act fast to enact the bill, as much as $20 billion in investment will be delayed or canceled and and more than 100,000 jobs lost.
At the Environmental Economics blog, John Whitehead says, “Show me empirical evidence“:
My contention is that tax credits can increase employment in preferred sectors but this employment is taken from other sectors of the macroeconomic. Employment and unemployment is unaffected in the aggregate.
Are any of the dips caused by a lack of targeted environmental policy? I’ll send a free “Drive Less! www.env-econ.net” bumper sticker to the first person who shows me empirical evidence that the U.S. loses jobs from expiration of renewable energy tax credits or some such policy using appropriate econometric methods and the 1946-2007 employment data….
His post includes monthly employment numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics since 1946.