Legitimacy of the s&p500 as an indicator of the economy?

I’ve recently looked into the index criteria for the s&p500 and while the requirements are objective numbers mostly, there’s a board that makes the final decision.

Is that not kind of bad? It’s subjective and the stated goal of the s&p500 is to reflect the us’s market wholly, so I kind of get the necessity of subjectivity here, but if we’re looking for a good easy tell for the us economy would the Dow not be superior?

Ive kind of come up with this hypothesis on the fly, poorly researched, so if im off here fair enough pls correct