[steakknife]

The digging holes thing was a facetious example in a textbook where he said burying cash in old mines would theoretically stimulate the economy. He didn't mean that the government should literally do that and the government never did. It was intended to provoke thinking about how mandating jobs during times of extraordinarily high unemployment can stimulate a depressed economy. People who hate the government on principle more than they like facts then purposefully conflate that pedagogical example with real government initiatives of the time like the CCC (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps) which was one of the most celebrated government programs of all time that built and repaired tons of important civic infrastructure mainly in our national park system, which became arguably the greatest on earth, saved thousands from poverty and involuntary idleness, helped stimulate the depressed economy, and gave desparate, disenfranchised young men a sense of patriotic purpose.

But this just becomes "zomg govt so dumb pays ppl to dig holes lol, communism fail".