And with a bit of luck, those other jobs would contribute to society in other ways. The question the parent was trying to answer was whether having those people

And with a bit of luck, those other jobs would contribute to society in other ways. The question the parent was trying to answer was whether having those people drive to their TSA jobs was a net good, measured in terms of "lives saved" which is the TSA's own metric of success - in other words, does it "pull its own weight", given the sunk cost of the commute?