#1600: "The Phrase": Drive comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Tom F. Driver <tfd3@columbia.edu>

Jean Jean-Pierre's well-founded suspicion about the accuracy of "the 
Phrase" and Guy Antoine's reply to it remind me of something that Ron Voss 
(Haiti Parish Twinning Program) is fond of saying:  "There is no 
unemployment in Haiti.  The figures say it's high, but that's not true because 
everybody in Haiti works all the time."

Voss's point, if it needs spelling out, is that the figures reflect only the formal 
sector of the economy, not the informal sector which keeps most of the 
population afloat.  Not afloat in a good boat, I hasten to add, and not very 
high above the lapping waves of disaster, but surviving anyhow through sheer 
hard work and ingenuity.


-------------
Tom F. Driver
New York City
<tfd3@columbia.edu>