You probably have a very self-selected group of friends and relatives. Go to one of the "low income" areas of your city, visit the local medicaid health-clinic for immigrants, or a local school, you will see vast swathes of dependent America - and CASH America. I know a family of Pakistanis who collect benefits AND run a totally cash family business.
Yea, my circle pretty much contains only “makers”.
One of the local university econ professors calculates that the cash economy in the area could be as high a 30% but is at least 20%. He came to that conclusion while doing work on taxing policy and the various traditional indicators didn’t fit the real numbers. It is interesting to see how the cash economy has grown over the last 25 years.