What’s the Economy for Anyway?

With this looming recession, or current recession (guess the jury is still out on this), it is no surprise that the economy is top of mind for Gen Z’ers and Millennials. But instead of fretting over the rising gas prices, the group of New York natives and transplants are concerned about the role the economy plays in our lives.

In America, we laud ourselves on our productivity and innovation which is very much measured by the king KPI — GDP. The Gross Domestic Product Metric shows us that America is an incredibly financially rich country. I would even argue, that nowhere in the US do you feel it more than in NYC, where the days for many of us are defined by the opening and closings of the market.

But, the economy is a social construct and our KPI for success myopically focuses us on productivity measures that cause us to lose sight of important pieces of society that feed into this elusive concept that we can term ‘happiness’ or ‘fulfillment’.

The conclusion we came to is that America is a society that we all choose to live in and continue to choose to live in because of the plethora of opportunities available. But as a society, we have gone too far and have hit a point where the limited but steadfast focus on dollars earned, saved, and produced, leads to a level of dissatisfaction with life that needs to be addressed.