[b1daly]

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.

That’s all government spending.