Consider what typically constitutes “good” economic news: The stock market booming.
- Hamilton Nolan
- In These Times
Corporate earnings rising. Business growth. In general, any factor that contributes to an environment in which businesses can get bigger, hire more workers, make more profits, and enrich investors to a greater degree.
This vision of the economy’s legitimate purpose is so deeply ingrained in the cultural fabric of America that any economic journalist or analyst who did not accept it would never be hired in the first place.
Yet it is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the…