I get the impression that a lot of people in the west fundamentally fail to understand what the purpose of an economy actually is.
An economy is a model for allocating labour and resources in a way that meets the needs of the people in the country.
The original argument for capitalism was that market economy with private ownership is the most effective way to allocate labour and resources in a way that benefits everyone.
Measures such as the stock market and GDP were meant to act as proxies for measuring how well the economy was accomplishing its stated purpose, which is to improve the standard of living for everyone.
Understanding that these metrics are simply proxies has been lost today, and they’ve been turned into goals of themselves. People have started treating the stock market and GDP as the economy.
This is why we’re seeing an increasing disconnect between the economy that people are experiencing in their daily lives and news reporting on how the economy is doing.
And that’s why we see absurd articles like this one arguing that the recession people are experiencing isn’t real.
https://www.wsj.com/economy/it-wont-be-a-recession-it-will-just-feel-like-one-1919267a
Salt mines are the most benign sort of mines to work in. With the proper machines, you can dig stable tunnels more than 20 metres in width and height, you can comfortably walk around in them, you aren’t in any danger of getting stuck or the walls caving in, you aren’t mining anything dangerous, you don’t get lung cancer from being there, the climate is nice and dry, and the lamps actually work because the salt reflects the light well. Send them mine ore instead
HA, coal and cobalt for these ghouls!