My dog could run this economy (Make-Work Bias).

I have a dog with a "great personality." My Shadow is no Marley, but if there were a World's Worst Dog competition he'd have given that poor lab a run for his money. Aside from all the normal bad-dog activities (chewing the most expensive pair of shoes he can find, eating garbage, tearing window screens out so he can take himself for a walk around the neighborhood), Shadow has recently started digging holes in my front lawn.

Last night at 11:30 (trying to find my shovel in the dark so I could fill in the most recent hole before it was too late), I realized he and I would make a great team of federal employees; he digs the hole, I fill it in.

The main goal of the stimulus package is apparently job creation. And, if you take a quick look at http://stimuluswatch.org/ and consider the types of projects being funded, it seems like new jobs are the only goal - not productivity.

They might as well give me a billion dollars to hire Shadow. He'll gladly dig holes and let me fill them in for the next eight or ten years. What patriotism!

And hey, if you park Shadow and me on the right piece of land, we might even do a farmer a favor by turning the soil. (Or would that counteract the purpose of this stimulus? Is productive contribution to the society to be avoided?)

There is at least one dog park entry in that list of projects. And what's a dog park, other than a grand-scale version of what's going on in my front yard right at this very minute? We go to the dog park occasionally, and digging is second in popularity only to butt-sniffing. I strongly suspect our first dog park visit corresponds closely with the appearance of the first massive hole in my front yard. Building a dog park is a great way to make-work. I suspect it creates more work for city / county employees than the average park does. After all, if those holes are dug, someone has to fill them in. Lady and the Tramp notwithstanding, the dogs are not going to do it themselves.

Therefore I propose that if they are going to spend the money on that sort of "job," why not just send every dog owner a check and let us do the digging and filling in at home? (This would be better for the environment, too, since we wouldn't have to drive to work.)

On the other hand, if saving labor is good for the family (and by refusing to pay me to stay home and fill the holes Shadow digs, the govt seems to be implying it's good for me to conserve labor), shouldn't it also be good for the city/ county/ state/ country? A certain dismal scientist said something along these lines in 1776: What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. (Adam Smith)

If I spend time filling a hole Shadow dug, that's time I could have spent doing something more useful. (Working - doing the dishes - reading my son a bedtime story - writing something frivolous in my blog - you fill in the blank.) That time is lost in a very real sense.

I recently read a very enjoyable (or possibly "very nerdy") book by Bryan Caplan. He has some interesting ideas about why democracy works the way it does, but I was most fascinated with his descriptions of the fallacies Bastiat talked about long ago. My personal favorite of Caplan's four biases was the "Make Work Bias" - essentially, this is his name for the attitude that it's jobs that matter, rather than productivity. Folks who embrace this bias tend to underestimate the importance of conserving labor and enjoying leisure time.

I'm going to repeat the Smith quote: What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. (Adam Smith)

If it's prudent for me to try to avoid unproductive make-work, then it's prudent for the USA to avoid unproductive make-work.

Now... off to find the shovel again.