April 28, 2009

Green Shoots

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Tapped glosses an EPI report on green jobs:

Most notable is its pronouncement that a “green” investment is one of the most stimulative forms of government spending, providing a 1.6:1 return-to-investment ratio. This is greater than generic infrastructure investment (1.59), temporary tax cuts (1.03), and corporate tax cuts (0.3)….Now for the less-than-rosy projection: men would be disproportionately advantaged by this spending, accounting for 75 percent of the total employment gains.

Actually, that’s not as bad as it sounds — at least in the short run.  As CAP’s Heather Boushey points out, men have absorbed 75% of all job losses during the current recession, so a stimulus program that targets them disproportionately makes some sense.  After all, it’s either that or let them stay home grinding their teeth and taking cues from Fox News about who to blame for all this.  And we don’t want that, do we?

Overall, EPI’s model projects that $100 billion in green investments would generate 750,000 jobs and raise wages of non-college educated workers by about half a percent per year.  Plus it would help prevent us from turning the planet into a cinder.  So that would be another bonus.  The whole paper is here.

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