Who's in this story?

Miscellaneous General
1

Okay, I heard a story about a man who is walking through a town/city and sees a group of men in an excavation project digging with shovels. Our hero walks up to them and asks why they aren’t using machines to acheive maximum efficiency, and the leader replies “This is a jobs-creation project”. Our hero retorts, “If this is a job creating project, why bother with the shovels? Just give 'em spoons!”

I took some astistic liscense, but you get the basic idea. Anyway, I’m fairly certain the man is a specific person, (Hayek maybe?) but I can’t remember who.

Any info is appreciated, thanks.

2

I heard it was Milton Friedman, while touring China.

3

It’s often credited to Friedman, but it sounds more like a case of a joke that turned into a legend as more details were added to it to make it sound more like it really happened.

Here it’s relayed as a joke featuring two Boston laborers

But here’s a nice run down of various accounts of the story.