It wasn’t always this way. For most of American history, it would have been strange to suggest that buying things — as opposed to making them — was deserving of high regard or to suggest that the availability of cheap goods should be a major goal of economic policy. Most Americans were small farmers, craftsmen or merchants, and a person’s economic identity was typically that of a producer or a landowner. Macroeconomic policy, such as it was, consisted of trade policy and the protection of the liberties necessary to do business (such as protections from monopolies).

That changed over the course of the 20th century. Broadly speaking, it was the story of the rise of American consumer culture, the decline of farming, the spread of mass production to household goods and the birth of advertising. But the specific prioritization of consumers and shareholders in economic policy dates from the 1970s and ’80s, in what amounted to a mostly well-intentioned project gone too far.

During the ’70s and ’80s, many critics of corporate America argued that elevating the interests of consumers and shareholders would introduce rigor and discipline to big business, while curbing some of its abuses. The giant American corporation, the argument went, had become too big, too distant from its consumers and stock owners. Consumer activists like Ralph Nader drew public attention to the many ways in which consumers were routinely mistreated. A particularly vivid example was Ford’s decision to select a design for its Pinto model that it knew was prone to fires; Ford made the cold calculation that producing a safer car would cost it more than the lawsuits it would face.

In addition, the shareholder-rights movement of the ’80s — driven by corporate raiders like Carl Icahn — accused corporate management of squandering money. What the movement considered waste included indulgent pet projects and the hiring of cronies, but also things like generous pension funds for workers. Economists urged that management’s only goal should be the maximization of shareholder profit. The 1987 film “Wall Street” captured this ethos in Gordon Gekko’s famous speech about shareholder greed, which was “good” — the salvation not only of American businesses but also of America itself.

By the 1990s, these ideas had become a kind of national gospel: Focus on consumers and shareholders and all else will follow. This simple, disciplined formula is not without appeal, and it has been wildly popular in the tech industry, which loves metrics. But at its center is a glaring omission: the fact that the American people are not just consumers and shareholders. We are also employees, business owners, family members, citizens. And the hard fact is that there is no such thing as prioritizing one thing without neglecting others.