They’re complaining about how efficient Jackdaw will be

We are astonished at how bad some arguments are:

Jackdaw gasfield would create only 27 direct full-time jobs, documents show

This is good, obviously. But it is being used as an argument against:

Campaigners say field will bring minimal benefit for UK economy, as industry lobbies Burnham for go-ahead

Woe to all of us as the national economic conversation is carried out using such foolish, foolish, logic.

Let us leave aside the climate change and emissions part of this. Concentrate just on the jobs angle.

Economic resources are scarce, human labour is one of those scarce economic resources. Our desire is - always - to have more output, more stuff, from the use of less or fewer economic resources. We’re richer that way, of course - for the resources that we’re now not using can be employed to create something else for us to enjoy.

This is what the whole conversation about “increasing productivity” is about, the use of less human labour to produce the something, freeing up labour to produce more somethings elsewhere. Even, to the point that humans may do less labouring and enjoy a bit more leisure.

As Paul Krugman as pointed out, productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it’s pretty much everything.

So, Jackdaw will produce however much energy it is, some measure of tax revenue but will create only those 27 jobs? That shows that Jackdaw is massively, stonkingly, productive in its use of human labour. This is terrific, a substantial increase in our economy.

Yet that “it’s only 27 jobs” is being used as an argument against Jackdaw.

Sigh.

Whether the argument is being put forward by fools, ignorants or charlatans is a secondary issue. It simply does not bode well when the national economic conversation is based upon people getting the economics wholly, precisely and completely the wrong way up.

Jobs are a cost, not a benefit. Lots of production with few jobs is A Good Thing.

Tim Worstall