a learned economist saying that the economy had already bottomed out and was on the way back up. However, he claimed, employment would lag behind the recovery as even growing businesses would resist hiring new employees for as long as possible, that is, the employment numbers would lag behind the "real" recovery.

I have no quarrel with his analysis and I don't know if he's right or not, but I do have a big problem with the way these people conceptualize the "economy", as if it were some abstract process not involving real people and real lives. As far as I'm concerned, the whole purpose of the economy is to provide people jobs so they can purchase the things they have produced with their labor and which they need.

The economy isn't some private playground where bureacrats and papershufflers can play entrepreneurial games and seek self-actualization and one-upmanship amongst their peers. The only reason it exists is to convert human labor into human wealth, that is the social contract: we do our share of the work, we get our share of the results of that work. All the rest is just middlemen and overhead. Some management must go into every complex process, it is a necessary component of work and it deserves to be well-paid. So do those who take risks or innovate in ways the rest of us won't, or can't.

If they are keeping the machine running smoothly, they deserve to be rewarded handsomely. But the machinery does not exist solely for their benefit, and neither is its success based entirely on their expertise. . They need to remember they can be replaced just as easily as the workers they employ. There's no shortage of hungry people queued up behind them waiting to take their place.

Until people are working, the economy isn't.