Who needs a free market? We have free marketing.

How words shape the way we think…and set our course for the future.

Remember opposite day, that inane but vaguely amusing game from elementary school? A game where the sentence, “you’re really pretty — it’s opposite day” blurted out in mixed company was a quick-witted insult worthy of laughter? Well, maybe only till first grade, but still.

It seems, in our America, we’ve instituted opposite century. Only it’s a bit more convoluted and complicated than that old stand-by we played in earlier days.

In our America, we cherish freedom — ask anyone, they’ll tell you so. And so we are free, very free,…

A Tale of Two Bumper Stickers

How words shape the way we think…and set our course for the future.

Just last week as I maneuvered through Berkeley traffic, a red light allowed me to contemplate a bumper sticker rarely seen around here: “Gun Control Means Using Both Hands.”  Then, in cosmic bumper sticker battle, another car pulled up alongside touting the message “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will accidentally shoot their children.” I wish I were making this up.

Why are these dueling bumpers worth considering in a blog usually about the economy? There, in 18 words, is almost everything that’s wrong with progressive attempts at persuasion.…

Economic A.D.D.–Our obsession with the deficit

How words shape the way we think…and set our course for the future.

**Author’s note: Full credit and great thanks to fellow New Deal 2.0 blogger Marshall Auerback and editor Lynn Parramore for inspiring this article and supplying me some of the quotations I’ve used.

Does a deficit have any redeeming, productive purpose? Is there any reason to not just defend but desire “deficit spending”?
Dictionary.com defines the word this way:

Deficit
1. the amount by which a sum of money falls short of the required amount.
2. the amount by which expenditures or liabilities exceed income or assets.
3. a lack or shortage; deficiency.
4. a disadvantage,…

Don’t call it health care reform

How words shape the way we think…and set our course for the future.

As a frequent member of the large and growing club of the uninsured, I’d like to suggest we stop calling our national televised circus a debate about health care reform. Despite exhaustive coverage of our D.C. meatpacking plant, where the sausage-making is especially messy and determined to resist any casing, there has been almost nothing said about health care.

Health care is the set of not usually-pleasant things that happens when you’re with your provider — half-naked seeking answers or reassurances. It’s what they do to you in the…

A rose by any other name

How words shape the way we think…and set our course for the future.

The change was barely noticeable. And as irritating as the hold music that followed: “please stay on the line, we’re with another customer right now…” With that, transformed from patient to consumer, it became acceptable to think of health care as an industry and health as a product. There. All done, you didn’t even feel that, did you?

Flash of insight (not mine): words mean things. When we fundamentally alter how we talk about an issue, we eventually alter how we perceive it. What we assume should be done and…

Hey Economy, Have We Met? (Part 2)

How words shape the way we think…and set our course for the future.

What is the economy? If it were a color, what would that be? What sound does it make? What smell does it emit? Go ahead and chalk these questions up to my proximity to Berkeley.  However, the story we tell about what the economy is shapes what our audiences believe can and should be done to it.

In our quest to make sense of abstractions, to understand what we can’t actually see, we’ve devised ways to simplify. One of these is by comparing a complex notion to something well-known.…

Hey, Economy, Have We Met? (Part 1 of 2)

How words shape the way we think…and set our course for the future.

You’ve probably noticed progressives like us are still pretty worried about the economy. No, but I mean worried, about The Economy. As if it were a living, breathing, thing. We hear about things “causing damage to our economy” and conversely about the stimulus package “sending needed relief to the economy.”

We talk about an “unhealthy economy” and use words like “ailing” “suffering” and “ill”. Certain policies, it’s feared, will “cripple the economy.” All of these, and other phrases like the “economic recovery bill” liken the economy to a body.…