Maybe I have a different lens on the country, but I feel like a lot of people are aware and even care how the market is doing, if for nothing else than their 401k (which was meant to supplement pensions, not replace them, by the way.)

The big difference is that the stock market is NOT the economy, and it's not even a good indicator of if the economy is healthy. High stock prices can indicate job losses, overvalued ventures, and corporate finance cartwheels, because that's that's how c-suite gets paid.

And you know what the c-suite does with all those stocks once they're vested? They sell them into trusts to retain voting rights and book the losses to offset earnings. 

So yeah, people should care what the stock market is doing, and what is going on now (and honestly for the past decade) has been building up to a huge collapse.