Dear Everyone, Please Care Less About the Dow

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Ned Hodgman at the very underrated Understanding Government blog has had it with the media’s unrelenting need to put the stock market at the center of the American economic recovery.

Today’s Wall Street Journal front page headline, scanned this morning over coffee by the Journal’s 1.7 million subscribers, is “Stocks Drop to 50% of Peak.” I’d say we’re better off with 50% of the nonsense we had when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was the default indicator of the country’s economic health.

It’s not just the numbing predictability of the news every day — again with the Nikkei average, again with the S&P 500, and now every morning we’re supposed to care about the stock futures too.

That’s force of habit (and a lack of imagination) from the nation’s news outlets. The real problem is that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is only one measure of prosperity in this country, and certainly not the most reliable. Let’s look back a year or so and see if the Dow’s “peak” was a reliable indicator of anything except the coming crash.

Ned has some suggestions on what might make better indicators of the recovery. Might I suggest Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness?

PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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