The term “the economy” is tightly associated with the voodoo science of economics without a strict and uniform interpretation or definition, and thus this question will yield a wide range of interesting answers. So, perhaps the best way to answer this question is what the economy of a country should depend on, rather than does today.
Does
Economics, as the drivers of an economy, means literally “rules of the house.” An understanding developed by the ancient Greeks that the performance of a country (or any group) is determined by rules that yield a specific behavior of its participants. The pursuit of the desired type of gameplay instituted by rules. In the same way, the provisions of a family household, implemented as the protection of collective freedom, will promote the pursuit of individual freedom and performance by its family members.
Hence, the performance of an economy of a country (derived from freedom) is the consequence of the implementation of paradoxical rules (of freedom) by economics as its cause. The depravity of reason lodged deeply in the schooling of economics, and a reason why many economies do not perform as advertised or predicted comes from this systemic confounding of consequence and cause. The false presumption the economy is the cause and economics are merely its consequence yields the broken logic responsible for its disheveled outcome.
Should
So, to answer your question. The factors an economy should depend on are the rules to promote the strengthening of the evolution of humanity. The economics that lay down the rules of the game to deliver an economy to yield amongst continual change an improving equilibrium of humans with nature. Nature that supplies us with the natural resources we depend on for survival.
Quite the opposite of our current rat-race for wealth that kicks the can of long-term evolutionary interests further down the road for selfish short-term monetary interests, courtesy of the depravity of man-made logic.
