Economists like to tell a possibly apocryphal story about Milton Friedman. The prophet of free markets, visiting an Asian country in the 1960s, witnessed a public works project that had people making a road with picks and shovels. When he asked why they didn't use earth-moving machines instead, a local official responded that the goal was to provide people with jobs. In that case, the economist asked, why didn't the government just have the workers use spoons instead?
This parable elicits a chuckle from many economists, who use it to contrast the hard-nosed, efficiency-minded thinking of their discipline with the ineffectual mandates of bumbling bureaucrats. But to many outside the profession, the story demonstrates a willful ignorance about the importance of work and human dignity. I recently wrote that the government should focus on getting people jobs instead of just mailing them money. Ideas for doing that range from government employment guarantees to public works programs to tax incentives for corporations that hire more employees.
Inevitably, the people who chuckle at the "spoons" story are going to label these programs as make-work. If the market isn't willing to pay people to do a job, they'll say, it isn't worth doing. Already I've received a few responses along these lines. People who take these jobs might do it for the money, they say, but they'll know the work wasn't really needed, and they won't derive dignity or self-respect from doing it. Better to just mail them a check.