No outward signs of economic depression? Wrong...

Recent commentary has broached the subject of why there are no visible signs of the mass unemployment similar to that of the Great Depression--lines for soup kitchens, vagrant camps and hitchhiking migrant workers. One answer was that the current welfare state, where SNAP cards, payments for housing and expenses are electronic, keeping recipients off the streets, didn't exist in the 1930s. The result of government feeding and coddling the unemployed and under-employed is anything but invisible. Commentators are looking at the wrong symptoms because they are actually everywhere, especially among the youth, and they are getting out-of-hand... they are trending. The concept of youth needing to be functionally occupied may have been behind the misguided plan Marie Harf touted last February to supply jihadis with jobs. The off-the-wall idea stems from a complete misunderstanding, and illogical view, of what incites youth, in particular, to latch on to a passing trend. And "trends" come and go in the blink of an eye. All one need do is observe how rapidly social media switches focus from one shallow subject to another. Idleness fuels the constantly changing interests. But what fuels the idleness?