Ah, but the original widget manufacturer bought a Senator, and so now there are onerous widget regulations that specifically target me while leaving them unscathed.
Don't you know widgets could somehow be dangerous in the hands of.. uh.. the Chinese?
> The real economy
It's possible it stopped existing decades ago. To quote the character of Dr Burry: "It's possible that we are in a completely fraudulent system."
> It's possible it stopped existing decades ago.
This is one of those things that sounds profound, but if you actually think about it, is obviously bullshit.
Of course there's a real economy. By definition, any time you have a bunch of people buying and selling things to earn a living—and we've got over 300 million of them doing just that in the US—you have a real economy.
That doesn't mean it's the same as the economy that's being paid attention to by the media or the government, but the idea that "the real economy stopped existing," let alone "decades ago", is....well, it's not even wrong. It's a complete category error.
The only way you can possibly assert that in the face of obvious reality is to start redefining terms until they are effectively meaningless.