> Is it the government's job to keep people employed for the sake of employing them? No! The most basic task of government is to maintain a stable social order

> Is it the government's job to keep people employed for the sake of employing them? No! The most basic task of government is to maintain a stable social order (see, e.g., the preamble to the U.S. Constitution). With sustained, pervasive unemployment comes social unrest (see any number of examples from the past 100 years). So .... > The government spent a lot of money on public works projects to help put some people back to work. But this didn't do much to actually end the depression. It was the onset of WWII and the subsequent ramp-up to a war economy that really ended the Depression. According to most economists (from what I've read), the New Deal was doing OK at getting people back to work until 1937, when the government suddenly cut its spending and raised taxes. That threw the economy back into recession.[1] And yes, the massive deficit spending of WWII did indeed pretty much take care of unemployment, and then some. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1937 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1937