Are useless jobs good or bad?

I've just returned from Japan, and I noticed a lot of people there are employed doing totally needless things (standing around all day just to wave the occasional bus on to a hotel parking lot, etc.)

So do you think it's good or bad to have those kinds of jobs in an economy?

I have been involved with Japanese business and culture for 15 years.

This is a keen observation.

Briefly, the Japanese social compact is different then most of the West. Well, all of it really :)

For cultural and historical reasons I could but won't go into here, Japanese are most comfortable in a homogeneous environment. They are very reluctant to rock the boat. I bet you didn't notice it, but I also bet that during your entire trip you didn't hear Japanese say "No" directly at all.

From the individual to the top level government, the culture is such that the group harmony is more more important then individual achievement.

So, with that in mind, those jobs provide some contribution to the group harmony by keeping the wheels greased so to speak. In that regard, they do have value. We have similar jobs in the US, but not so often - the doorman at an apartment or hotel that does nothing but open a door and wave the next taxi from 30 feet away come to mind.

Because all jobs are looked at as contributing to group harmony in Japan, there are complex economic reasons and ways they are subsidized.

The level of entrenchment of these issues in the Japanese psyche is indicated by how difficult it has been since their bubble economy burst in the late 80s to get rid of inefficiencies and move in, as we did when our bubble economy burst (and may need to do again so, but that is a different story).

Doozo yoroshiku onegai-itashimasu. ("Thanks for the favor of allowing me to answer your honored question" - which is how Japanese speak to each other routinely.

People got to work , better them having them sitting around on a government funded social program...

it is bad, it is better to let them sit home idly rather than have them waste precious resources, fuel, etc.

Good. Think through the alternatives. There's also the saying, "Idle hands are the devil's playground."

So, the answer is, well, in a grey area.
It is probably better that the folks be working than sitting around doing absolutely nothing. But here is the catch. If they already have a useless job, but it pays well, they might not want to take a far more productive job, at least not unless it pays far more. So the problem that occurs by keeping hands from becoming idle and keeping the neighborhood peace, is that when the time comes to get more productive work done, you don't have people to do it, because they are not going to easily give up the cake *** job they have waving at buses.