I must hear it 50 times a day “the economy is doing great!”
I die a little inside everytime. It speaks to how the disenfranchised have internalized the elite’s world view. So, once more for the record: The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is not the economy.
– The Dow Jones Industrial Average, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index that measures the profits of 30 large, publicly owned companies and how those profits are valued by speculators.
– The profits of those companies, and the speculators view of the profits do not reflect new factories being built or new jobs being created. They did once, but they don’t now.
– In fact, today’s profits are derived from bookkeeping innovations, new tax breaks coming online, or frequently laying off American workers.
– Since NAFTA, the profits of companies listed on the DJIA have been created by sending jobs to Mexico and paying the remaining workers less relative to their productivity. Is that good for “the economy?” Tom Carper would have you think so.
– When someone says “the economy is doing great” and uses the DJIA as shorthand for the economy, they might be a wealthy person with large holdings in the stock market (like a US Senator, or a TV talking head for example). Yes, their “economies” is doing great.
– Or, more likely, they are simply a sleepwalking dupe who absent mindedly repeats the bullshit that he hears on TV.
