[mtempleton]

>If you are someone who wants more wind power to be produced, you want it to be cheap. You should be rooting for cheaper wind prices, which come with increased efficiency (including less employees per unit of energy produced).

This is a pretty good point, and it also leads in to an argument to be made for an important distinction between productivity and jobs.

People like jobs. Politicians and corporations talk about creating jobs. They're seen as universally good, but that is not necessarily the case. Especially as tech becomes more capable of automating more tasks, which may displace labor at a rate in which people have increasing difficulty in retraining quickly enough, it's appropriate to have a cultural shift in perhaps still valuing jobs, but not over valuing human dignity and economic productivity. An example I witnessed: The very grumpy woman in Paris who took a Euro from me to use the toilet could be given the same amount of money generated by an automated toll while she does something productive. Or even she could just do something which she enjoys and would be happier doing, but is non-productive, and that would still be Pareto efficient: it makes one better off without making anyone else worse off.

Policy should not seek to create jobs just for the sake of creating jobs. With appropriate, just and fair economic policies, it really shouldn't matter how many jobs an industry creates: it matters how much utility, and at what utility per dollar the industry is capable of. That is, assuming you care most about human welfare. I think most politicians care most about money and power.