CTLAWYER: Jewish philosophy is similar. Most “welfare” to able body men is given through kollels (they have to show up and learn to get paid) or through make-work jobs. The problem with make-work jobs is that they are very inefficient in a macroeconomic sort of way. One reason the Soviet Union had trouble keeping up with the US was a policy of full employment, so for example, their libraries stuck with card catalogs (providing employment to card typists and filers) while the US switched to online. The US developed machinery, and they provided full employment. Indeed, the “find work for all abled body adults” is a luddite argument, and is similar to those who want to ban self-driving cars . As a lawyer, conside what has happened to the large numbers of clerks, scriveners, cite chckers, loose-leaf filers who are now unemployed due to modern technology – perhaps we can find employment for them in law firms by banning word processing and computerized legal research tools. — But as I said, Jews traditionally pay people to do something useful, and the Americans have the demeaning custom of giving handouts and making the recipient feel like a failure.
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