Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada caused the central economic planners’ heads to explode in March 2009 when he released a study showing every “green job” the Spanish government was creating with its regime of open-ended subsidies was simultaneously devouring enough resources to create 2.2 jobs in Spain’s private sector. “Green jobs,” the professor concluded, were economic losers, destroyers of wealth and productivity. What’s worse, 70 percent of them were short-lived installation gigs, not long-term jobs at all.

Spain’s socialist government, which had presented “green jobs” as the way out of the country’s economic problems (perhaps that sounds familiar), reacted to Calzada’s study with fury. The Industrial Ministry took the incredible step of trying to make his university disavow his work. But behind the scenes, the same government officials were quietly coming to the same conclusions as Calzada.