At the start of the pandemic, a Work Therapy reader asked what “the economy” was and independent economist Saul Eslake’s short answer was “the set of arrangements by which people and entities are able to create, acquire and exchange things that they value”. Implied in this definition is the fact that there are economies everywhere, some that exist between small groups of people, and some that exist throughout or across entire nations or continents.

So, the first point to make is there is no single economy. Even if you assume people use “the economy” as shorthand for the largest one of many – the collection of commercial networks that make up the global economic system – that doesn’t change the fact that it’s highly complex and completely inseparable from systems and decisions unrelated to commerce.

It is also, as Eslake told me a couple of years ago, “constantly changing, exhibiting both short-term fluctuations and longer-term trends”. We’re not talking about some kind of statue, static and fragile, just waiting to be pushed over and broken.

If we wanted to be unnecessarily generous here, we might assume that your work critic knows all this but maintains that your ‘bad’ decision has a small but adverse affect on one tiny part of “the economy”. And that when many people make that same decision, there’s a large problem. But even if this is true, how can they be so certain about your particular decision?

By taking sick leave you might be depriving “the economy” of your labour, but you’re also reducing the likelihood of infection in your office. That means fewer sick people.

And that brings us back to “the economy” as some kind of impossible standalone entity. Unless you believe that people’s health and “the economy” are two entirely unrelated things that never affect one another, it’s very difficult to make such black and white pronouncements as “you should be in the office as a matter of economic necessity”.

Your colleague’s words were not fair in any way. They were inexcusable, really. But people will continue to make such silly comments for as long as we persist with the myth that “the economy” is at the same time an omnipotent, unknowable god worthy of our dutiful service and a tiny motherless bird requiring our constant protection.

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I hope you and your family are all back to their best very soon, and that your time away from work makes your recovery much easier.

Send your work questions to Work Therapy: jonathan@theinkbureau.com.au