As part of its program to provide summer jobs, the Washington D.C. government sent 2,500 youths to D.C. Artworks, a nonprofit group that supervised young people playing drums or dancing, among other activities. Paychecks were also supplied to kids who went to Marion Barry's Youth Leadership Institute. Larry Brown, the public affairs director of the D.C. Department of Employment Services, explained, "We don't fire any of the kids—it just doesn't do anything to help a 14- or 15-year-old." Youths who fail at one job site are simply transferred to a different job site.

In Brown County, Wisconsin, the local jobs program has paid students for sitting in high school during the summer to make up the detention time they did not serve during the school year. Many youths receive checks for time spent playing basketball. Many jobs programs engage in "job shadowing," paying youths to follow government workers around and watch as them go through the motions of their jobs.

As early as 1969, the General Accounting Office noted that many job recipients "regressed in their conception of what should reasonably be required in return for wages paid." After waiting five hours for his paycheck, one disillusioned 21-year-old remarked, "They tell kids not to sell drugs, that this is the alternative... This is ridiculous."

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