We have come to expect that our cities will be filled with homeless people and that working parents will have to make do with unsatisfactory, makeshift child-are arrangements. But this need not be. An economy that denies millions of people work while pressing needs go unmet is irrational. But concern about the cost of creating jobs inhibits proposals to offer work to the jobless, even if that work would produce desperately needed goods and services . This concern may be unwarranted.
Job creation is expensive, but so is joblessness.
The true cost of creating jobs for everyone who wants to work is the difference between the cost of creating the jobs and the costs of unemployment that governments already bear. Creating jobs for all might end up saving taxpayers more money than it costs them. The answer may be yes. The key to understanding why lies in an assessment of the costs of leaving people unemployed. Governments lose the taxes that jobless people would pay if they were working.