I’ll give you an example. My wife worked as an intensive case manager, where the job was ostensibly to help severely ill people manage their lives. Was that her actual job though? No, her actual job was filling out reams of paper work instead of actually helping anyone. That paperwork was sent to the state and the company got paid, with the vast majority of the money going to executives.

What would happen if her job were eliminated? Would the people be worse off? No, the whole point was to not help them and keep the state aid checks coming in. My wife wasn’t using her skills and was depressed and stressed all the time so she’d be better off if that job had never existed. Then there were the 3 layers of middle management coordinating all of the form filling. Their job was wholly redundant, and they didn’t do any meaningful work at all. Did they even need to exist? It’s not clear, but their existence didn’t work toward actually helping any real people. They just helped collect government checks. They were paid well though.

The people who would be harmed the most by that “work” not getting done are the executives.