Top tip for talking about the economy: Use the active voice
Do you need to be an economist to talk about the economy?
Sometimes I think we think that. “We” being people and “that” being “a Ph.D. in economics is needed.”
If we cede the economic conversation to corporate special interests, however, we lose on issue after issue to the laissez-faire economic story: “Let the markets work.”
At the “Pope is Dope” messaging session this year at Netroots, the panel was asked: What is the biggest mistake people make in conversations?
Without hesitation, Anat Shenker-Osorio responded: “Overuse of the passive voice.”
“People do things,” she said, “If you don’t make it sound like it’s people caused, it is cognitively impossible for it to be people fixed.”
