Comment by fatherwavelet

The economy in the 21st century developed world is mostly about acquiring positional goods. Positional goods as "products and services valued primarily for their ability to convey status, prestige, or relative social standing rather than their absolute utility".

We have so much wealth that wealth accumulation itself has become a type of positional good as opposed to the utility of the wealth.

When people in the developed world talk about the economy they are largely talking about their prestige and social standing as opposed to their level of warmth and hunger. Unfortunately, we haven't separated these ideas philosophically so it leads to all kinds of nonsense thinking when it comes to "the economy".