Would this be an effective use of resources? From the standpoint of economic theory, government expenditures in such areas often provide benefits that are not being produced by the market economy. Take New York subway stations, for example. Cleaning and painting them in a period of severe austerity can easily be neglected. Yet the long-term benefit to businesses from an appealing mass transit system is enormous. (This is an example of an “externality,” which the market economy, left to its own devices, will neglect.)

Such benefits are hard to measure precisely because there is no current market price for them. Cost-benefit analysts tend to be in endless debate about such programs, and so the social impetus for them often becomes blurred. Keep this in mind, though: Whatever the merits of specific programs, the cutoff that we choose for classifying a project as “good” or “bad” should be adjusted downward in periods of widespread unemployment.

Some researchers have expressed doubts, for example, that “throwing more resources” at students  providing more teachers and aides  is cost effective, in terms of objective measures of educational outcome.

In a period of severe joblessness like this one, however, someone who is sitting unemployed who would rather be working at a modest salary as a teacher’s aide should be given a chance, at least until the economy improves. In other words, the unemployment rate itself should be a major factor in evaluating such programs.

In 1936, John Maynard Keynes made much the same point: “Thus we are so sensible, have schooled ourselves to so close a semblance of prudent financiers, taking careful thought before we add to the ‘financial’ burdens of posterity by building them houses to live in, that we have no such easy escape from the sufferings of unemployment.”

PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT’S New Deal, though no more than partly successful, was much more focused on job creation than our current economic stimulus has been. It seems that the New Deal was also more successful at inspiring the American public.

Consider one of the most applauded of Roosevelt’s programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps, from 1933 to 1942. The program was open to young men, initially those 18 to 25, a group that was quite vulnerable economically. The C.C.C. emphasized labor-intensive projects like planting trees.