Well, that's a bit of hyperbole, but, lest the eyes glaze over, "economy" always needs a little jazzing up. And, even though gjohnsit's diary has got good traction, a bit of elaboration on the theme can't hurt.
Moreover, while this post might look like a contradiction of gjohnsit's conclusion
Thus all the drop in unemployment since December is due entirely to people leaving the workforce that still want a job.I'd call it an elaboration in that other explanations might also apply. Not to mention that even people holding down a job don't necessarily want it. Many people prefer to be self-directed or self-employed but the custodians of our currency make that hard. Only the aged and/or physically/mentally handicapped can count on a routine stipend that lets them do their own thing. People of sound mind and body need to be kept on a tight leash.
However, increasing numbers are finding another avenue of escape in the underground and California, always at the forefront of new trends, is keeping track of enterprise that, as far as one can tell from reports, has doubled in the last few years. That is, the underground economy, which was calculated to amount to a trillion dollars in 2009
economics professor Friedrich Schneider estimated that it was nearly 8 percent of the US GDP, somewhere around $1 trillion. (That makes the shadow GDP bigger than the entire GDP of Turkey or Austria.) Schneider doesn’t include illegal activities in his count-- he studies legal production of goods and services that are outside of tax and labor laws. And that shadow economy is growing as regular jobs continue to be hard to come by—Schneider estimated 5 percent in '09 alone.was reported to have swollen to two trillion by 2013, according to the Washington Post.
