Understanding the Shadow Economy, The Shadow of the Greek Economy
Abstract:
The title of the work reveals what was the motivation for dealing with the shadow economy. Understanding through study and impartiality. The shadow economy is a very difficult issue to expand on, because there are no reliable data (numer ical data) that can safely confirm its existence and size. There are very serious indications but not reliable proofs. What is certain is that the phenomenon "lives and reigns" and affects to a greater or lesser extent, depending on its size, the lives of citizens, the activity of businesses, the functioning of the state. Its existence is based on the concealment of values, on silence, on deception of authorities, on deception, on avoidance, on non-compliance. That is why most researchers refer to estimates, and these are uncertain, and not to reliable measurements. The research methods they use are many. Some with weaknesses and others with more serious weaknesses. In this work, I used the findings of researchers, Greek and foreign, to understand the shadow economy (conceptual understanding of its components: Shadow Economy, Tax Evasion, Tax Avoidance, Tax Exemption) as well as the numerical data (quantitative estimates) of their studies to mon itor the diachronic evolution of the shadow economy in our country. I believe that the shadow economy is not a purely economic phenomenon (there are no purely economic phenomena). It is both social and political. It interacts with the functioning of the capitalist economy and bourgeois democracy, essentially constituting a "gear" of them. The position I am putting forward is based on this logic, that ultimately the shadow economy becomes a brake on social development and economic and political transformation, as well as a mechanism (there are others) for the reproduction and perpet uation of the society of inequalities.
