[kamarg]

All of the examples you gave of jobs that government should be paying people to do are jobs that are already done in the private sector. Tutoring and child care alone are very large industries.

The biggest issue with your proposal is that if those employees paid by the government to do these jobs are paid less than the private sector, you'll put the private sector out of business. If they're paid the same or better, you would need strong incentives to make them go find a different job instead of keeping a market rate job that is assured to never go away.

[nradov]

You could just as well argue that we should eliminate existing government jobs and contract them out to create more private sector businesses. It's just a matter of degree.

I would propose that the temporary government employees be paid minimum wage. This isn't intended to be permanent.

[kamarg]

That minimum wage government child care worker would put a whole bunch of private sector child care workers out of a job because the government can sell their child care services for cheaper than that for profit child care company can even ignoring the fact that the government run child care will be entirely tax payer funded.

There's quite a few jobs for which the government rightfully has a monopoly. I certainly wouldn't want the fire/police forces to be private. We had that and saw the problems it created. Same goes for the military. I'm not aware of an example of a private IRS or judicial system at a national level but I can't possibly see that going well either.

So yes it's a matter of degree but I disagree with you strongly on where to draw the line.