# Why not government work projects for the unemployed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 19, 2009, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754 "2009-09-19T22:31:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Brainiac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8797f3/32.png) [@Brainiac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/41 "2009-09-21T19:39:43Z")
Can’t the poor just help themselves by doing services? Cut each others hair and write each others wills and do each others taxes. Let the cook and butler take care of food and shelter, like the rest of us. ---
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/42 "2009-09-21T20:25:52Z")
Isn’t the baseline problem with the idea of a works project type arrangement being that the gov’t has no money to pay for these things? Not really. Back when it was originally done, the gov’t wasn’t running a several trillion dollar deficit. Paying out money so folks can work at this point would just be robbing Peter to pay Paul, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/43 "2009-09-21T23:20:28Z")
> [@Brainiac](#): > > Can’t the poor just help themselves by doing services? Cut each others hair and write each others wills and do each others taxes. Let the cook and butler take care of food and shelter, like the rest of us. If the bank holding the mortgage on my house would let me pay by doing paperwork, working a shift as security or performing massages for management, I would be happy to do that. Unfortunately they want money (cue Nancy Sinatra here). As a society we have long, long gone past the point where people can just keep chickens in their backyard or perform handywork for each other to get by. The economy is literally a life support system for the nearly 300 million people in this country. If it fails people will go hungry and become homeless because there’s no other way for their effort to provide the basic necessities of life. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/44 "2009-09-23T16:19:56Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > And honestly, I never understood why we expect companies to borrow for normal operations. A start-up, sure. But is it really more cost-effective for an established company to borrow repeatedly than just to keep an operating fund? Presumably, we expect companies to borrow to meet short term cash flow needs or to expand operations until operations become sustainable again. Basically it’s the same reason people take out home or car loans instead of saving for years. You need to live in a house now or drive a car to work now. If you don’t have those things, it’s very difficult for you to be productive. Finance people aren’t stupid. Companies borrow because there is an opportunity cost associated with waiting to expand or develop new businesses. [QUOTE=Brainiac] Can’t the poor just help themselves by doing services? Cut each others hair and write each others wills and do each others taxes. Let the cook and butler take care of food and shelter, like the rest of us. [/QUOTE] They can to a certain extent, however if you model a typical poor community as an enclosed island you will see that they are limited to the resources available locally. Typically resources like lumber to fix homes, food for stores and restaurants, basically anything that can’t be grown, mined or manufactured locally has to come from outside their community. Without anything of value to trade, they would be limited by how much they can develop their economy. For example, Manhattan is also an enclosed island. Very little is actually grown or manufactured there. But it produces a lot of intellectual capital. [QUOTE=foolsguinea; Good thing we aren’t advocating magic finger-snapping as a serious policy then.[/QUOTE] The rest of your posts contradict this statement. > [@Hellestal](#): > > And yet there is still an argument to be made for projects that have no long-term economic value, like digging and refilling holes or building bombs and dropping them on Nazis. Even without the war, we could’ve built those dozens of ships and sunk them in the ocean ourselves, and it still would’ve put people to work and it still would’ve broken the back of the Depression. It does, in fact, create wealth to do these things, if only indirectly through job training and by pushing up the velocity of money with multiplier effects. You’re free to think that the costs outweigh the benefits in this case (and I’ll probably agree with you), but you can’t deny that some wealth is created. People who receive paychecks they would not otherwise have received will spend those paychecks on all of life’s little wants and needs, and that spending ripples through the economy. As long as interest rates are nudging up against zero percent, borrowing money to create these little ripples remains a feasible idea. This line of thinking sounds a little like the [Broken Window Fallacy](http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fallacy.asp?viewed=1). People are receiving paychecks but it is being paid for with either debt or tax dollars and is producing nothing (or even worse, just producing things that destroy stuff). In the long term it is not sustainable. I don’t like the term “stimulus” because it sort of sounds like just tossing money at a problem to make it go away. I prefer to think of it as the government leveraging debt to invest in the economy. So ideally that spending should be focused in the areas that will have the greatest return. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/45 "2009-09-23T20:21:54Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I don’t like the term “stimulus” because it sort of sounds like just tossing money at a problem to make it go away. I prefer to think of it as the government leveraging debt to invest in the economy. So ideally that spending should be focused in the areas that will have the greatest return. The problem is, the government doesn’t really have any clue what this is. They’e taking one or two _very_ dubious assumptions and then tossing the government coffers open. No surprisingly, their assumptions about what yields the greatest returns seems to be largely based around cliches and soundbites. ---
**Author:** ![Success20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/50afbb/32.png) [@Success20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Success20)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2010, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/46 "2010-01-01T22:16:10Z")
As a person who has always worked and has watched 3 jobs dwindle to 2 to 1 and that almost gone but not gone so I can’t get unemployment - but I had to apply for Snap food benefits and no I don’t shack up with anyone or do drugs, drink or smoke and no I am not making any babies cause I am too old - but not old enough to get on Social Security and I don’t have health insurance - so I can’t prove that I am too old to repetitively lift 100 pounds all day long - and yes I know how to read and have tons of education - but haven’t found a job - why not just have the able bodied unemployed build some gentle euthanasia rooms and let the poor who want to just walk into it? For those of you who think you have done everything the right way and you won’t be unemployed - and applying to government agencies for food - think again - it is happening to alot of good hardworking people in this country. Don’t think it won’t happen to you. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2010, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/47 "2010-01-01T22:44:27Z")
It’s very handy to blame Republicans for this, but in my experience, one of the primary opposition forces against government make-work jobs are the labor unions. In fact, the Davis-Bacon act, passed to placate the unions, requires that any such government jobs must pay prevailing union wages. This makes these kinds of jobs prohibitively expensive. It’s one thing to use the government to pay people $5.00 hr to clean trash out of ditches and fix leaning fences and fill simple potholes and such. It’s quite another to pay them $30/hr plus benefits to do the same thing. The Davis-Bacon act should have been repealed for stimulus spending, to put more people back to work for the same money. But it wasn’t. Hell, Bush tried to suspend it to speed the reconstruction of the damage in hurricane Katrina’s wake, but had to rescind the suspension after a general hue and cry from big labor. A much better idea is to set up a ‘job retraining’ corps. Find unemployed people with skills to teach, or volunteers willing to teach night classes, and hire them to teach classes to other out-of-work people. Pay the out of work people to attend the classes. You can teach anything from job interview skills and resume skills to overview courses that show people the skills required and job environments for various professions. I’m sure there are unemployed people on this board who could teach introductory HTML courses, or courses in effective internet searching, or whatever. No accreditation required. Just people organized to help each other learn things they know how to do, even if it’s just a class on how to maintain your own lawnmower. In these places, also provide job services, like access to internet computers, printers, FAX machines, whatever. Maybe even set up some incubators with micro-loans for entrepreneurial ideas. Provide free web hosting for people who want to try setting up internet businesses, and set up a collection of volunteers who can show people how to get their web pages online. That sort of stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Oregon\_sunshine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/50afbb/32.png) [@Oregon\_sunshine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oregon_sunshine)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2010, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/48 "2010-01-01T23:09:20Z")
Sorry dude upthread, but no need for the scare quotes around the word “earned” in Earned Income Credit… By its very definition, the credit IS “earned”!! The credit is only received by people who worked for money during that year, how is that NOT “earned”??? :dubious: :dubious: :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/49 "2010-01-01T23:14:21Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > So set up a business doing this “necessary” work. > > If it’s not “make work”, then there must be some demand for it. Fill that demand. > > Identifying and filling a real demand is the distinction between productive work and the kinds of meaningless [digging-holes-and-filling-them-in](http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:avZkt3mgYjQJ:www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/2571.pdf+digging+holes+and+filling+them+in&hl=en&gl=us') that seems to be the idea here. > Could I get a cite on how much money is currently not invested anywhere, and how taxing it away and giving it to people to do things that nobody wants done will help the economy? > > Regards, > Shodan A lot of depression-era work remains or remained in the near past. Thompson Park, a large area on the southeast side of Watertown, NY, was improved using natural stone walls and gravel walkways by the CCC. When we visited my father’s cousins in Ellisburg, NY, in the 1950’s, we traveled along State Route 193, paved in the '30s by either the WPA or the PWA, and at that time scarcely improved from what was done then. Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge of Virginia was a similar project. There are campgrounds throughout much of the country which were either started for or built by the CCC. Projects like the TVA and Hoover Dam are similar. I believe these sorts of bricks-and-mortar projects, though not srictly necessary, are valuable, value-adding adjuncts to the country. It is worth remembering that combatting the Depression was bipartisan and predates the New Deal, IMO, the stimulus package was largely similar to Hoover’s RFC, and, like that agency, a valuable but not sufficient component of recovery to prosperity. There are a lot of thing that can be done. It’s worthwhile to pool experience and attitudes and figure out what should be done, without either side simply heaping denigration on the other. ETA: Sorry, I didn’t realize at first this was a zombie thread. But it does seem to be viable. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2010, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/50 "2010-01-01T23:22:53Z")
> [@Oregon\_sunshine](#): > > Sorry dude upthread, but no need for the scare quotes around the word “earned” in Earned Income Credit… By its very definition, the credit IS “earned”!! The credit is only received by people who worked for money during that year, how is that NOT “earned”??? :dubious: :dubious: :dubious: It’s not earned because no additional work labor is traded for money (neither the government, nor any businesses paying wages gain additional labor). It’s a transfer of wealth with no time limit. It’s really another version of welfare based around the number of children. If you want to be cynical about it, it’s a breeding program for poor people. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/51 "2010-01-02T01:13:35Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > It’s not earned because no additional work labor is traded for money (neither the government, nor any businesses paying wages gain additional labor). It’s a transfer of wealth with no time limit. It’s really another version of welfare based around the number of children. If you want to be cynical about it, it’s a breeding program for poor people. You’re objecting to the term “earned income credit” because the credit itself isn’t “earned” by labor? The entire point is that in providing assistance to the poor, the goal is to reward providing for oneself by doing gainful work. Contemplate, for a moment, a single parent with school-age children and no access to after-school care. She therefore needs to be home when her children return from school. She therefore cannot work full-time IF her former husband is alive and paying child support, or deceased and had proper insurance, she may not need public aid. But she will otherwise be unable to support herself and her children working part-time. But, said the EIC advocates, perhaps if we reward her for working to partially support herself and her family, over and above the wages she earns, by reducing her tax liability through a tax credit, this encourages her to work – in exactly the same way that tax credits for business encourage them to invest in ways beneficial to society. This is paid to her as a refund check, in the same way as too much withholding is refunded. The one difference is that the social planners did not put a floor of zero tax liability, so that she may owe a negative tax amount, i.e., get a lump-sum government aid for large expenses (replacing her used car, buying new furniture to replace decrepit pieces, buying a microwave she could not otherwise afford, etc.). I am not absolutely certain the EIC is the wisest of poloicy – but I see the sense of it, rather than single purpose aid on an ongoing basis, and predicated on having gainfully earned the sum it is posited on. ETA: To object to the term “earned income credit” because the credit itself is not earned is nearly equivalent to oblecting to the phrase “oil depletion allowance” for the big energy companies on the basis that the allowance itself is not oily. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/52 "2010-01-02T01:31:02Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > I am not absolutely certain the EIC is the wisest of poloicy – but I see the sense of it, rather than single purpose aid on an ongoing basis, and predicated on having gainfully earned the sum it is posited on. I feel the same and I see the sense in it but the reality of it is that it’s a permanent transfer of wealth. It is a welfare program that shifts the poor into a slightly higher state of poverty. it doesn’t appear to break the cycle of poverty which means we continue to fund a growing population of people who require assistance. It should be accurately called welfare so it remains in the spotlight as something that needs fixing and not swept under the rug as a permanent status quo that should be expected and planned on as a way of life. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/53 "2010-01-02T02:51:28Z")
In the first place it is not make work jobs. Our infrastructure is falling apart. There is a lot of work that desperately needs to be done. Everybody working at a job has to be supported by management and office help . They all help support restaurants, bars, companies that make tools, equipment , banks and many others… Jobs create jobs . In Detroit there was a hiring for new workers at a casino. People were lined up by the thousands trying to get hired. People who think there are lots of people who just don’t want to work are delusional. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/54 "2010-01-02T12:48:34Z")
It’s a good idea for the government to invest in projects which provide real jobs to people. But they should be jobs for wages, not work done for unemployment benefits. Otherwise you can end up with a situation where a private contractor might want to tender for work to, say, wash the windows of government buildings, but can’t get the work because the government is paying unemployed people pennies to do it instead. Then the private contractor ends up not being able to pay its staff, so it lays them off; there’s not much other work around, and they end up unemployed, and do eventually get to clean those windows - only for tiny amounts of benefits rather than actual wages. ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/55 "2010-01-02T17:11:38Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Who in America is literally starving? There are food banks and other sources of food for the poor all over America. Are there people who are literally starving? [ > [@](#): > > ]([http://www.wwltv.com/news/Kenner-Food-Bank-80023467.html](http://www.wwltv.com/news/Kenner-Food-Bank-80023467.html)) > [Wednesday was especially busy, with families trying to get in before the Food Bank closes for the Christmas holidays. But a shortage of food donations means that some of these people may have to be turned away.](http://www.wwltv.com/news/Kenner-Food-Bank-80023467.html) [NYTimes](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17hunger.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print): > [@](#): > > The increase, of 13 million Americans, was much larger than even the most pessimistic observers of hunger trends had expected and cast an alarming light on the daily hardships caused by the recession’s punishing effect on jobs and wages. > > About a third of these struggling households had what the researchers called “very low food security,” meaning lack of money forced members to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food at some point in the year. For some conservatives, however, even this is a political issue: > [@](#): > > Some conservatives have attacked the survey’s methodology, saying it is hard to define what it measures. The 18-item questionnaire asks about skipped meals and hunger pangs, but also whether people had worries about getting food. It ranks the severity of their condition by the number of answers that indicate a problem. > > “Very few of these people are hungry,” said Robert Rector, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “When they lose jobs, they constrain the kind of food they buy. That is regrettable, but it’s a far cry from a hunger crisis.” Heaven forfend the government should provide food to the poor. ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/56 "2010-01-02T17:30:28Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It’s one thing to use the government to pay people $5.00 hr to clean trash out of ditches and fix leaning fences and fill simple potholes and such. It’s quite another to pay them $30/hr plus benefits to do the same thing. Well, what’s wrong with that? Sure, it’s more expensive as far as government spending goes, but on the other hand if you pay people an adequate wage, they’ll be able to go out and spend it, thus stimulating the economy. And it’s not as if there is a lack of possible public works projects. . . Besides, if our infrastructure continues to decay, the end result will likely be a far greater expense in transportation costs. > [@](#): > > A much better idea is to set up a ‘job retraining’ corps. Great idea. [But the money is being spent on the wrong people](http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/18/news/economy/Bloomberg/index.htm). > [@](#): > > Find unemployed people with skills to teach, or volunteers willing to teach night classes, and hire them to teach classes to other out-of-work people. Pay the out of work people to attend the classes. That’s fine, but I don’t see how it would be enough. Nor is there any reason to see it as mutually exclusive with other stimulus ideas. > [@](#): > > In these places, also provide job services, like access to internet computers, printers, FAX machines, whatever. This is what many people use libraries for. Unfortunately, library budgets are being cut: > [@](#): > > In the current economy, libraries have become a place many have turned to as a way to rent free movies, to help with a job search via public Internet access, or just to take advantage of a variety of programming. > > Now it’s the libraries, however, who are looking for ways to trim their budgets as they face funding cuts being handed down from the state level. > > According to the New York Library Association, this is the third time in 20 months that libraries have received cuts in funding. Funding was first cut in 2007 from $102 million to $99 million. Then in 2008, the state took away $8 million more, and in April 2009, it was reduced again to $87 million. > > The New York Library Association said this most recent $4.2 million cut will bring library funding to levels not seen since 1998. > > [http://www.morning-times.com/articles/2009/12/18/local\_news/doc4b2c52c956c2e112601231.txt](http://www.morning-times.com/articles/2009/12/18/local_news/doc4b2c52c956c2e112601231.txt) If the conservative plan is job (re-)training, I have yet to hear a single one oppose these cuts. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/57 "2010-01-02T18:23:42Z")
> [@scifisam2009](#): > > It’s a good idea for the government to invest in projects which provide real jobs to people. But they should be jobs for wages, not work done for unemployment benefits. > > Otherwise you can end up with a situation where a private contractor might want to tender for work to, say, wash the windows of government buildings, but can’t get the work because the government is paying unemployed people pennies to do it instead. Then the private contractor ends up not being able to pay its staff, so it lays them off; there’s not much other work around, and they end up unemployed, and do eventually get to clean those windows - only for tiny amounts of benefits rather than actual wages. Why pennies? They have to pay the prevailing wage, with benefits. If they already have the windows being washed that would not qualify as a new job. There are plenty of jobs not being done that need to be. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/58 "2010-01-02T19:50:05Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Why pennies? They have to pay the prevailing wage, with benefits. If they already have the windows being washed that would not qualify as a new job. There are plenty of jobs not being done that need to be. I used window washing as an example because that was brought up earlier. I agree that there are plenty of jobs that could be created. Why would they pay the prevailing wage plus benefits, then, rather than simply advertising the work as a job? That’s not a rhetorical question. I was under the impression that, as in other countries, people working for their benefits got paid _less_ than if they’d applied for it as an actual job. Otherwise why would the government have that scheme going? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/59 "2010-01-02T23:36:40Z")
I find it very interesting that, for the most part, Conservatives seem to think that it’s better to give poor people \*handouts \*rather than _give them work to do_. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2010, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754/60 "2010-01-03T02:22:59Z")
> [@Lightnin](#): > > I find it very interesting that, for the most part, Conservatives seem to think that it’s better to give poor people \*handouts \*rather than _give them work to do_. Then you don’t understand the point. It’s better to use a pre-fundedvshort term insurance policy than to build a bureaucracy that drags things out. It’s a function of getting the best return on money spent. If we’re going to go that route, then better to give tax discounts to businesses to hire new people. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-government-work-projects-for-the-unemployed/510754.md?page=4)