No, that's looking at the wrong place. Yes, the ditch diggers may make money and that may go on to generate wealth, but at the point where we're paying the ditch diggers, we're burning wealth. We could either have gotten something for that money, or nothing, and we chose nothing. There's opportunity cost there. Quite significant, in fact.

A lot of people make this mistake, including the government and even it seems to me many economists, always looking to the next transaction and failing to think about this one. But this one is the one that counts right now. The mere fact that the dollar wasn't "destroyed" doesn't mean that it did anything good, and it certainly could have.