EARNDEX

Both the New York Times and Google News, 2 of the leading sources of news on the web, prioritize their top news categories similarly, as follows: World, US, Business, Sci/Tech, Sports and Entertainment. Arguably, 2 thirds of these categories (Business, Sci/Tech, Sports and Entertainment) make implicit calls to consumption; either in the content, or through surrounding ads. Whether it be the purchase of financial services, gadgets, tickets to sporting events or the latest video games, the framing of the news favors consumption.

But, what about the other side of the ledger? Where are the (sub) categories that implicitly speak to the earning (or lack of it) that makes the consumption possible in the first place?

It got us thinking, “if stock indexes are great for giving the investor a heads up, why not an earner index, or EARNDEX, that gives earners a heads up, by tracking categories of interest to earners, or those who aspire to be earners”.  EARNDEX tracks  categories such as  ‘joblessness’,  ‘middle class’, ‘poor’, ‘top 1%’, ‘wealth sharing’, ‘wealth gap’ and so forth that get at the life long challenge of earning.

The news cycle drives  the economic and political cycles. Each day, EARNDEX  allows you to see the % of the news cycle devoted to a given category relative to the others. So, for example, we’ve observed that the top 1% and the poor routinely get more coverage than the middle class. You can also see how news share for each of the categories compares from week to week. Use EARNDEX to stay informed on the news that matters most to your livelihood.

We’ve been following Michael Moore, and while we don’t agree with him on everything – for example, we believe capitalism itself is not the problem, but rather the problem is parasitic business cultures that have forgotten how to be symbiotic – we thought he kept it real when he was interviewed on Democracy Now. Take a look.