Public Service Employment-Assured Jobs Program: Further Considerations
The Conservative belief that there is some law of nature which prevents men from being employed, that it is "rash" to employ men, and that it is financially 'sound' to maintain a tenth of the population in idleness for an indefinite period, is crazily improbable-the sort of thing which no man could believe who had not had his head fiddled with nonsense for years and years.... Our main task, therefore, will be to confirm the reader's instinct that what seems sensible is sensible, and what seems nonsense is nonsense. We shall try to show him that the conclusion, that if new forms of employment are offered more men mill be employed, is as obvious as it sounds and contains no hidden snags; that to set unemployed men to work on useful tasks does what it appears to do, namely, increases the national wealth, and that the notion, that we shall, for intricate reasons, ruin ourselves financially if we use this means to increase our well-being, is what it looks like-a bogy. -John Maynard Keynes 1972, 90-92