Hutton on Nuclear

Now, as it happens, I agree with John Hutton here. We do need an expansion of the nuclear industry. Yes, let's go and build lots of new stations, get ourselves off the oil and gas dependency thing and reduce our CO2 emissions all in one go.

However, I don't think much of his logic:

A government minister will call today for a huge expansion of Britain's nuclear power in what he predicts could be a £20bn economic bonanza that will create 100,000 new jobs and benefit the economy as much as North Sea oil.

It's one of those painful ideas, one that almost causes real physical pain as opposed to simply psychological, that such creation of jobs is a good idea.

The actual thing that's being done might be a good idea, as here, but I really never have understood the posturing about "it'll create x jobs".

Because the creating jobs part is a cost of the plan, whatever plan it is, rather than a benefit. We're deliberately dragging people away from whatever else it was they were doing (and it doesn't matter what: watching TV or curing cancer) and insisting they now do this new thing.

So we lose the output of whatever else it was they were doing. Thus, "creating jobs" is a cost, not a benefit.

Why is it that politicians never understand that?