When I first visited and then lived in the US for about a decade (coming from Europe) I was surprised about what I perceived as purely a jobs program kind of jo

When I first visited and then lived in the US for about a decade (coming from Europe) I was surprised about what I perceived as purely a jobs program kind of jobs. Examples: People at road construction sites holding "Stop" signs, packagers in supermarkets, money collectors in toll booths (even before electronic devices, just using a machine was easily and cheaply possible and frequently and successfully used elsewhere), and a few other jobs that appeared to be unnecessary and purely intended to keep some people busy. Things like that, and how the defense budget is actually used as a jobs program in large parts, were quite eye opening for me. I came from former East Germany and we always thought US as the most capitalist of all places, but when I first visited for a few months of travel not long after reunification I was very surprised to find some things that we in East Germany even used in jokes comparing East and West, and now I found out that e.g. "employee of the month" (with a special parking lot no less), that we thought was a typical socialism thing, and we even had a joke about that which implied and presumed that something like that could never exist in a country such as the US, was something they actually had. Also, the reverence to uniforms (military and police especially) was very East German. I think the US is confused about how capitalist they really are. Under the hood they try to solve the same problems as everybody else and come up with very similar solutions, only that they need be be branded differently because you can't do any "socialism" openly.