Boondoggle: Work of little or no value done merely to look busy.
Moondoggle: Establishing a Moon colony – work of little or no value done merely to look busy (and appear inspirational).
When a government introduces financing into the economy, John Maynard Keynes terms it “loan expenditure” – for example, public unemployment benefit is partly financed out of government loans. Keynes noted that the reasoning behind types of loan expenditure often seem unclear:
It is curious how common sense, wriggling for an escape from absurd conclusions, has been apt to reach a preference for wholly “wasteful” forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict “business” principles.
— J M Keynes “Chapter 10. The Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Multiplier (VI)”, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936 [Keynes’s emphasis]
