我和我的妻子只会在大事上发生争吵：例如她把用过的厨房器皿统统放在洗涤槽里是不是个好主意。在此我要郑重声明，答案显然是否定的：因为这样一来，原本只需快速冲洗一下的咖啡过滤漏斗和过滤器就会沾上其它盘子上残留的油迹。我妻子简直是在制造工作。
一天，我一边往洗涤槽里注入热肥皂水，准备清洗咖啡过滤漏斗，一边思考着其中的矛盾之处：我们对于在更广泛的经济中创造就业表示称赞，却对在家里制造工作的做法强烈抱怨。
公众话语中到处可见对创造就业的迷恋。在宣传可再生能源补贴时，相对于这或许能放缓气候变化的暗示，创造就业的理由似乎更容易被接受。在我看来，如果考虑丧失的就业（而非丧失的服务），英国执政联盟削减公共开支的计划似乎会变得更不受欢迎。国际贸易也因为破坏就业而受到谴责——在它之前是新技术，从经济学家的观点来看，两者大致相同。
这其中存在很多荒谬之处，我们应更多关注厨房洗涤槽提供的见解，即创造不必要的工作并非好主意。即便我有意雇用一个清洁工，来清洗那些脏得毫无意义的盘子，表面上创造的就业也是一个假象。我被迫花在清洁工身上的钱，本可以用来下馆子，让厨子和服务员有活干。哪怕我把这笔钱存起来，它也能增加储蓄总量，降低借款和创业的成本。
经济发展就是一个不断毁灭就业的过程。最早是农业毁灭了猎人的工作，然后这个过程不断重复，直到电子邮件、手机和文字处理软件的问世又毁灭了秘书的工作。在这个历史过程中，失去工作的那部分人，有一些发现了更有用的事情去做——教书、行医或学习工程设计——而不是无所事事地坐在那里长肉。
从原则上来说，提高劳动生产率（又称“毁灭就业”）可能会让我们用更少的工作获得同等的物质回报。这或许会令人愉快——欢迎进入每周工作5小时的世界，也或许会令人讨厌——只有少数精英人群有工作，而大多数人则没有工作并被边缘化。实际上，会令不久以前的未来学家感到困惑的是，当所有的家务事都可以由机器人处理时，我们并没有过上安逸的生活。而是选择将更高的劳动生产率当作更多财富来享受。（我们确实拥有了更多自由时间：更长的假期、更短的工作时间和工作寿命——尽管人们的整体寿命延长，却更晚工作，更早退休。但我们享受到的空闲时光却远远没有可以享受的那么多。）
尽管如此，在有些情况下，创造就业的机制也可能是合理的。我们目前的境况就是其中之一：经济环境疲弱，公共部门裁员又可能抑制私营部门。英国执政联盟对于减少公共开支有着不错的理由：加税也会抑制私营部门，而持续借款不可持续。但认为减少公共部门就业本身将有利于私营部门创造就业的看法是一派胡言。
那些经济一直难以从一个行业的毁灭中复苏的地区又会怎么样呢？一个简单化的经济模型显示，这些地区的薪资将下降、私营部门企业将涌入、而增长也将恢复。而现实则更为残酷，无论是左翼还是右翼阵营都未能提供解决之道。我们需要的是有意义的工作。但我们还没有找到创造这些工作的可靠处方。
译者/梁艳裳
My wife and I only argue about the big issues, such as whether it's a good idea for her to leave utensils in the sink. For the record, clearly not: it means that coffee-filter cones and colanders which need nothing more than a quick rinse are infected with deposits of grease from other dishes. My wife is simply creating work.
The other day, as I was running a sink of hot, soapy water in order to clean a coffee-filter cone, I mused on an inconsistency: we celebrate creating jobs in the wider economy, but complain bitterly about creating them around the house.
We can see the obsession with creating jobs everywhere in public discourse. It seems to be easier to sell renewable energy subsidies through the idea that it will create jobs than the suggestion that it might slow climate change. The coalition's plans to cut public spending appear to me to be more unpopular on the grounds of lost jobs than lost services. International trade – and before it, new technology, which from an economist's viewpoint looks much the same – is also condemned because it destroys jobs.
There is much that is silly about all this, and we should pay more attention to the kitchen-sink insight that it's not a great idea to create needless work. Even if I was inclined to hire a cleaner to wash pointlessly dirty dishes, the apparent job-creation is illusory. The money I felt forced to spend on a cleaner I might instead have spent on a night out, employing cooks and waiters. And even if I had saved it, it would have swollen the pool of savings and made it cheaper for someone to borrow money and set up a business.
Economic growth is a continual process of job destruction. Start with agriculture, which destroyed the jobs of hunter-gatherers, and keep going until you get to e-mail, mobile phones and the word processor, which have destroyed the jobs of secretaries. Historically, some of the people whose jobs have vanished find something more useful to do than the grinding task of finding enough calories: teaching, practising medicine or learning engineering.
In principle, increasing labour productivity (aka “destroying jobs”) could lead to us doing less work for the same material gains. This could be pleasant – welcome to the five-hour working week – or horrible, with an employed elite and an unemployed and marginalised majority. In fact, to the bafflement of yesteryear's futurologists, we do not lead lives of leisure while robots handle every chore. Instead, we have chosen to enjoy the benefits of greater labour productivity as greater wealth. (We do enjoy more free time too: longer holidays, shorter hours and working lives which start later and finish earlier despite a longer overall lifespan. But we take far less leisure time than we might.)
All that said, there are circumstances in which make-work schemes might make sense. One is the situation in which we find ourselves: a weak economic climate in which public sector job cuts could depress the private sector too. The coalition has a decent argument for making cuts: tax rises would also depress the private sector, while continued borrowing is unsustainable. But the idea that the cuts themselves will help create private-sector jobs is nonsense.
And what of areas whose economies have persistently struggled to recover from the death of an industry? A simplistic economic model suggests that wages will fall, private sector companies will rush in, and growth will resume. Reality suggests a grimmer diagnosis, but not one for which either the left or the right has produced a cure. What is needed are jobs that matter. We don't yet have a reliable recipe for creating them.
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