How bad is the economy? Many people believe it is still in bad shape. Others don’t see any problem. They will point to a low unemployment rate, record corporate profits, and a booming stock market.

The difference in perspective is explained in a recent column on, Why This Feels Like a Depression for Most People. It begins with this simple observation. “Everyone has seen the pictures of the unemployed waiting in soup lines during the Great Depression. When you try to tell a propaganda believing, willfully ignorant, mainstream media watching, math challenged consumer we are in the midst of a Greater Depression, they act as if you’ve lost your mind.”

During the Great Depression, there were as many as 12 million Americans unemployed. These were the men pictured in the soup lines. Today, they are essentially invisible. “There are 46 million Americans in an electronic soup kitchen.” The 46 million on food stamps are hidden from our view.

Let’s look at it another way. There are 251 million Americans of working age and only 149 million are employed. That means that only 59 percent of Americans of working-age actually work. That is a much lower percentage than it was during the Great Depression.

The author concludes that for “the average American family, the US economy has been in recession since 2000, with the Greater Depression arriving in 2008.” Although the working age population has grown by 40 million since 2000, only 12 million jobs were added during that time. Most of those new jobs are in the government-controlled health, education, social services sectors. Millions of good paying manufacturing jobs disappeared during that same time period. That’s why this feels like a depression to so many people.