To what extent can you proxy macroeconomics with broken down cars on highways?

Question

How can To what extent can you proxy macroeconomics with broken down cars on highways? be made on topic and not opinion based? Thanks.

Answer 1

I can't speak for others, but the reason why I voted to close down was this part of the question:

Has u/royalrush05 on r/TrueAskReddit discovered a new and improved indicator of the macroeconomy?

This question is inherently opinion-based. Anything you want can be an indicator. Also improved compared to what and across what dimensions? In its simplicity and ease of data collection? Amount of correlation with economic performance? Ability to forecast economic activity? By being theoretically appealing because there is an underlying reason for there to be a relationship between the indicator and variable you want to proxy?

To make it more objective, you could try to rephrase it in a way that makes it possible to answer the question factually. For example, rephrasing the question as:

Is there any empirical evidence for the number of broken cars being related/correlated/able to forecast macroeconomic activity? Have other economists tried to proxy macroeconomic performance with broken cars in academic literature or by any policy institutes?

Furthermore, to also make your question more narrow, you might want to specify whether the macroeconomic performance you care about is in terms of output or employment or some other macroeconomic performance because just saying macroeconomy is a bit broad. On the same note, I used a lot of slashes / in my suggested edit because even though your question was closed as opinion-based it is also quite broad. I would recommend making some effort in figuring out what exactly you are most interested to make the question more narrow.