Innis

A boy throws a stone. Glass shatters. The crowd gathers and someone says what crowds always say in such moments, which is that at least the glazier gets work. Money will flow. The economy will be stimulated. This is the thing you can see and count and point to. What you cannot see is the shoes the shopkeeper would have bought, the bread, the books. Those merchants stand in their shops waiting for a customer who spent his money on glass instead, and their loss leaves no trace, and because it leaves no trace no one puts it in the ledger, and bad economics goes on being made by people who only count what they can see.