Looks like Euonymus.

I'm guessing this bush/shrub poses absolutely no purpose...is that right?

Actually this is a pretty common garden shrub. Tough, vigorous, nice color. They'll get pretty large if you let them. Prune them to keep them looking nice. Inconspicuous flowers and fruit. Deer will nibble them.

WW

Hard to tell if this is Golden Euonymus (E. japonicus 'Aureomarginatus') or Euonymus fortunei 'Emerald n Gold', since the photo is cropped so closely.

In either case, it's a useful and very tough evergreen shrub for full to part sun that keeps its nice golden color in the winter. Fortunei being more a ground cover or low spreading shrub. Japonicus being an upright to rounded shrub to 6 to 8 feet or so.

Typically fortunei does not run underground, unless you pile much on it and it resprouts. So it's not really 'invasive' the way it sounds you are worried about. Unless you are seeing seedlings. Here in Northern VA we don't typically see seedlings from either species.

Both benefit from pruning several times during the growing season to keep in a more compact form (if that is what you prefer). Both can revert to all green, so usually the all green (more vigorous) shoots should be pruned out.

All in all I consider either a useful shrub for contributing to interesting foliage contrasts and forms in the garden and landscape. And the evergreenness lends to nice winter interest. Well-clipped fortunei has been used effectively at the front of borders, along sidewalks, etc.

Catbirds like to move around among the japonicus bushes and hunt for insects.

i hate them ... subject to hardcore scale infestations ...

i got rid of all mine.. over the years ...

i add this.. simply to show you.. that whether or not it has value to some... it doesnt to others ..

so.. make your own decision ... but if you keep it.. and it ends up with scale.. just be done with it ..

or just decide the spot would be better filled with something that makes your toes tingle.. and be done with it ...

ken

In thirty years with various euonymous I have only had a scale infestation once over a large bed of groundcover. You can whack it to a nub just barely protruding above the ground, dose it with a good spray of oil, rake up all debris and it'll rebound again directly. I laughed when the man next door whacked down my mother's euonymous hedge, because he thought it intruded on his driveway. He was free to trim it anyway he wanted or we would have, had he mentioned it to us. He did not remove the root systems and it came back like a phoenix.

Yes, burning such that ground is seared or truly pulling all the root system is the only way to get rid of it.
My answer...there are better more attractive things to plant, but if low maintenance green is your thing, it might be for you.

It can be a plant to work in situations when others won't. I covered a small hillside with Purple Leaf Wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei) because it had been the dumping ground for clinkers from the coal furnace of the farmer who once lived here and mined his own coal. There was little topsoil there, veins of white horseshoe quality clay, rocks and it was steep. Did an excellent job of holding in the hillside and providing cover through four seasons. I guess what I am saying is it can be an attractive and practical choice to be a 'space retainer' until more desirable choices mature and size up. This is same hillside now.