Follow Spain's Lead: Double Our Unemployment

Jillian Bandes | May 05, 2009 12:22 PM

At this point I can only wonder why a country like the U.S. with relatively low unemployment would like to learn how to create jobs from a country that has very high unemployment.

That was Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, speaking at the American Energy Solutions Group conference this morning. He was highlighting an important facet of the Democrats new cap-and-trade proposal, that new energy technology will require more manpower to operate than old technology, creating a surplus of "green jobs."

Spain tried that. It didn't work.

Michele Bachmann blogged earlier about Calzada' seminal study that concluded for every one new "green job" the Democrats cap-and-trade plan instituted, 2.2 other jobs were lost under Spain's cap-and-trade plan.

This undoubtedly contributed to Spain's current 17.4% employment rate, which is nearly twice what we're suffering from in the U.S.