> Well there's always the old Swedish system. If you couldn't work you
> were treated generously, but if you could work, every effort was made
> to find you a job, and if one wasn't available, one was created. It
> wasn't cheap - it cost something like 2% of GDP - $200 billion in the
> U.S. - but it was popular.
I don't know why you use the past tense. I think Sween still spend something like 2% of GDP on active labor market policies. Taxes are still the highest in the OECD - 52.2% of GDP. And unemployment is currently 5.0% according to the OECD's standardized concept - which, I believe, counts all make-work jobs as unemployed.
Seth