Check out The Rise of the Underground Economy. Bottom line? This is what they really would say if they were honest –
1. Economists looked down on the unregulated, unlicensed markets of the world because they worked at state funded institutions and regulated markets, essentially, paid their salaries. Unregulated markets know economists and weather forecasters are the only people in the world who keep their job even when they’re in the wrong, but that weather forecasters are at least helpful sometimes.
2. Now that that the balloon juice “regulated” and “licensed” markets of Wall Street – encouraged by the imbeciles in Congress of course – got a swift kick of reality and things are going to hell, economists are saying “Thank God somebody in the world still works on cash for services rendered and can still keep something happening, otherwise they’d be in deep trouble like we are in the West.”
3. We did not mention Bernie Madoff and his clones in this article because their criminal antics might lead people to believe that licensed and regulated markets might not be perfect when we know they are… at least perfect for hiring economists.
4. It’s safe to talk about this underground economy because it’s in India and no threat yet to American economists.
5. Economists didn’t like the underground economy because those people aren’t smart like the people at Bear Stearns and AIG and all the other big Wall Street firms that are now bankrupt or acquired – but at least these people wore cologne.
6. Unregulated markets are bad because they don’t pay enough taxes to employ useless economists and bail out the friends of useless economists on Wall Street. They are selfishly preoccupied with feeding their children and not feeding bureaucrats.
7. It noted there are some off the books workers in the US. They are usually discovered when a political operative is selected for a cabinet position and it’s found that the worker was “informal” because the bigwig was too cheap to pay their “fair share” of taxes.
8. One person lecturing at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government suggested that informal employment such as rag picking among the garbage piles like human Wall-E’s may solve urban decay. Because the implication of that statement is that government programs haven’t solved it already, one can only conclude she forgot where was opening her mouth.
9. But in case the political class can’t lead us to believe they have been sufficiently adept at solving the crisis they’ve largely created, we might as well mention rag picking as an occupational choice now since it may be in our futures. Unless we’re in the elite class and can become useless economists.
10. If the people who gave Anna Nicole Smith – a known addict – drugs are now under arrest for encouraging her addiction, the people in Congress who’ve let this mess get worse for years should be under arrest too for giving drugs of a sort to the addicts on Wall Street. (I added that part.)
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