From "What are we bid for a clue?", by Francis Volpe in the Carlisle, PA Sentinel:

There's a net loss of about a million jobs since 2001. Medicare and regular health insurance premiums are skyrocketing. Federal deficits are at a record level in absolute dollar figures.

These are all signs of a stagnant economy. But Vice President Dick Cheney thinks the numbers would look better if the government would just count people selling stuff on eBay.

"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."

There was a lot of controversy about Cheney's other statement last week that a vote for John Kerry is a vote for another terrorist attack. The White House hurriedly distributed edited transcripts of that speech exchanging a period for a comma, and Cheney backtracked to the more reasonable position that the next attack is coming and people should choose who they think will respond better.

But I think the eBay comment is the one that really demands a second look.

That Cheney's eBay statement is factually accurate is beyond debate. But as is usual with the Bush administration, he uses a true fact to create a false impression.

Sen. John Edwards got to the heart of the matter when he answered Cheney. "If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking," Edwards said.

Because what Cheney is really talking about is counting the underground economy when we gather statistics.

Now I wouldn't mind knowing how much activity there is in the underground economy myself. Let's look at eBay. I did this by doing a search on "Dick Cheney" and I got 82 entries.

Some of these were collectibles -- autographed photos, campaign souvenirs and a copy of his wife Lynne's suppressed Wild West novel "Sisters." The latter had the highest bid at $255.

Then there were the anti-Cheney T-shirts and buttons, several featuring a verbatim quote of his R-rated outburst on the floor of the U.S. Senate. (My favorite was one depicting Bush and Cheney as Bevis and Butthead.)

Some of these entries were posted by people who run businesses, so they likely are counted in the statistics, Cheney's statement to the contrary. Others are clearly capitalizing on the opportunity to make a few bucks from stuff that once would have been put out for spring cleanup.

That latter example demonstrates that it's possible to harness the power of junk to fatten one's personal bottom line. I like that Cheney endorses renewable resources in this context, and I might suggest he consider transferring the idea to this administration's energy policy if he ever gets around to revising it.

But back to the point. Some folks are casual sellers. And it's a cinch that many of these people aren't reporting their eBay gains as income and therefore aren't paying income taxes on them.

That puts them squarely in the underground economy. Another way to be a part of it is to engage in illegal commerce. That includes bookies, people who peddle bootleg cable boxes and unlicensed computer software, the guy at the flea market with the counterfeit CDs and videos, the folks who take deposits for home improvements and skip town, and so on.

Now if Cheney thinks we ought to find a way to measure all that economic activity, well, OK. But I'm skeptical that the data will support the point he was trying to make last week.

He seemed to be saying that the weak statistics of the past few years cover up the fact that folks are relying on their entrepreneurial skills to put dinner on the table. But if he wants credit for all the handymen and laundry ladies who don't report their income, well, he'll have to add them on to all the statistics for the last 50 years.

That won't help the current economy compare more favorably to the boom times of the 1980s and '90s.

The underground economy is always with us, but my guess is that more people participate in it when real jobs are scarce. The harder it is to earn a paycheck, the more likely it is that people will peddle their junk instead of putting it out to the curb.

When they run out of Cabbage Patch Dolls and baseball card collections, they'll have to put their more valuable possessions up for sale to make ends meet. Like the computer they were using to post auctions on eBay. And so on down the economic ladder.

No doubt some folks do OK working the Internet auctions, although my experience has been that people who spend a lot of time on those sites end up spending as much -- or more -- than they earn. That's a pastime, not a profession.

And professions are what the job creation statistics tell us are trickling away rather than multiplying. The 144,000 jobs created last month were barely enough to cover population growth, let alone put any of the unemployed back to work.

So it occurs to me that the real argument to be made in this election is whether the next administration's employment policies will require Americans to periodically liquidate their possessions to keep up with rising prices.

We know where Cheney stands regarding that argument. Keep in mind that of those 82 Cheney-related auctions I found on eBay, not one of them was posted by Cheney himself.