Actually, the stock market is the economy, and the majority of Americans DO own stocks

Even though the economy is not the stock market, the stock market is part of the economy. Whenever economists look at economic data, they don’t (nor should they) just ignore stock markets around the world. That would be cherry-picking data.

By the “stock market” most people mean the S&P 500 which compromises 500 large U.S. companies. I would say these companies actually are a representative sample of the total population of U.S. companies, but even if I grant that these 500 companies…