> Why is having people doing forms of “make work” worse than letting people waste away into despair?
How would you suggest choosing who gets to do the "make work" versus who must toil away at the necessary? How would you suggest compensating those whose work is more vanity than value if no one pays them for their output?
If someone is lacking marketable skills, and is forced to take a “make work” job, I would hardly call that a “vanity” project.
This was done in the Great Depression, to try and keep the economy going.
There are ways to create work that is valuable, but the market value is below what anyone can afford to live on. So the government could subsidize salaries, in addition to hiring people.
Getting back to my comment about military spending: I see it as a destructive waste. How does that get decided? It’s decided by people operating in a complex political-financial-industrial-military complex.
If we, as a society, can decide to waste lives and wealth on idiotic military action, we can decide to spend wealth on helping our own citizens.
How would you suggest choosing who gets to do the "make work" versus who must toil away at the necessary? How would you suggest compensating those whose work is more vanity than value if no one pays them for their output?