Volume 32, Number 18 · November 21, 1985
The Dishonest Economy
By Lester C. Thurow
Off the Books: The Rise of the Underground Economy
by Philip Mattera
St. Martin's, 160 pp., $25.00
Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status
by Robert H. Frank
Oxford University Press, 306 pp., $22.95
When Americans look at the underground economy in the Soviet Union and other communist countries many of them do so from a perspective of American moral superiority. Since an economy run on communist principles cannot supply the jobs, goods, and services that its people need, they say, otherwise law-abiding citizens are forced to retreat into the underground illegal economy. As producers they must violate the law to meet their state-imposed production quotas; as consumers they must buy on the black market or violate the law in other ways to get what they want. The existence of an underground economy within the Soviet bloc proves that communism does not work. It is economically and ethically bankrupt.
Review, 4589 words
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