Sambal

Here’s something I’m unclear about: Suppose you’re unemployed and the government gives you a make-work job — e.g., digging ditches and filling them in again, or breaking windows and replacing them.  This is supposed to stimulate aggregate demand.

Then when the government ditch-filling program ends, do you get unemployment benefits?  It looks like you can get them when your census job runs out, so I would presume so.

So in a Keynesian economic system, it would be good to do that, because it would help make the recession less deep.  In a recalculation view, wouldn’t it  just prolong the recession (“recalculation period”) by creating alternatives to the “new patterns of specialization and trade” that are necessary to resume growth?