<div>On 4/3/06, Jim Devine <<a href="mailto:jdevine03@gmail.com">jdevine03@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> To my mind, the only "social" standard would be what people want as expressed through democratic institutions. But most economists don't like democracy, except in a very limited way. By the way, if we're going to push for increased government employment of labor, the best way is to link it to the long-term supply-side growth of the economy (e.g., rebuilding the levees in New Orleans). Rather than having government workers dig holes in order to fill them in again, have them do something that the so-called "private" sector won't do, because it isn't profitable, but is needed. </blockquote></div> Thanks Jim. Your answer simplifies-clearly what I have heard in the past. What I was trying to do is imagine the most inefficient use of a government employment program.  Thus it seems to me paying people to make rooftop gardens in New York, is inefficient if the government is doing it, but is efficient in limited way if a rich person wants to pay a gardener to put a garden on the top of his Park Avenue penthouse.  The usual story I guess.   But a more serious question.  What do these economists say about the choice between building super highways and mass transit networks?  I know there are some economists who believe that super highways should be privatized but who would have built them in the first place?  And the only reason I can see to prefer a superhighway to mass transit is because it benefits the relatively well off more in the short run (excluding externalities) than mass transit.  Oh well....  So one further question, Jim and other economists.  I have not studied economics... though I have studied mathematics and game theory at a good dilettante's level and I am very good at history....  so my question is, beside reading people like yourself and Doug, who mainly seem to concentrate on demystifying economics....  is there anything in economics that you can't counter with basic skeptical common sense?