There’s no such thing as Economics — and other good stuff we’ve found out
So, one thing I didn’t expect to find out from heading up Economy’s research project is there’s no such thing as Economics… Amazing news? Should I go on holiday? :)
So, what do I mean by that?
Well, it’s hardly new news that there might be a jargon barrier for most of us when economics is mentioned. Maybe you read about our poll in the news last year, but in case you didn’t, just 12% of the UK public said the economy was spoken about in an accessible way.
But with such fantastically jargony words out there like ‘quantitative easing’, ‘stagflation’ and ‘derivative’ it hadn’t occurred to me that we’d find out ‘economics’ itself is also a pretty unnecessary word for most people.
To me, say, at Economy, ‘Economics’ with a capital E means the thing ‘economists’ study. Our research interviews have shown that most of us have very little awareness of Economics with a capital E as a subject in this way.
For most of us ‘economics’ simply means ‘how well we’re doing.’
Analysing this, our hunch is that to most of us ‘economics’ simply means the situation of us as a country or group or me as a person getting things I need. When I ask ‘What does the word economics mean, as you understand it?’, I might hear replies like:
‘How well a country is doing … in terms of wealth, how well the country is prospering, the prosperity of a country. Technology-wise the development of a country.’
Um Younis, 34
‘Economics is the state of the financial situation of the country, that how I understand it, whether that’s right or wrong, I don’t know. That’s what it means to me.’
Sam, 34
‘The economy’ and ‘economics’ are basically the same thing…
Lots of the people we’ve spoken to use the word ‘economics’ and ‘economy’ interchangeably. A lot of the time we might say ‘economy’ to mean the topic of economics, rather than to mean that thing ‘the economy’ we hear about in the news:
‘I have a blog now and I’m in the creative economy. I’d never thought of myself as someone involved in economy. I used to think economy was boring until I got more interested in creative economy.’
Alissa, 20
A third intriguing discovery? Very often we don’t even say ‘the economy’, we simply say ‘economy’.
‘Well, the economy is the price of things, the price of food, the price of oil and petrol, and gas and electricity. And a lot to do with economy is a lot to do with various companies who sometimes are out to make money, if you like.’
Ross, 56
‘There’s this negativity surrounding economy. When you speak with your friends, everyone’s divided. A kind of a touchy subject because you can really easily upset people.’
Alissa, 20
This kind of shorthand for all things economics is to be expected, especially in conversation, and in speech people can often drop words here and there. But one of our hunches is that people are also just not very comfortable or confident using the word ‘economics’ or ‘economy’ in a sentence.
In spite of how bombarded we are with the subject we actually don’t talk about it very often. It turns out many of the people we’ve spoken to haven’t had a conversation directly about ‘economics’, well, er, ever. That makes sense — when we polled people in March 2015, 30% of us said we ‘don’t have anyone to talk to about economics but would like to discuss it more’.
One thing that’s come through really clearly in our research is that the media, politicians and economists alike talk about ‘the economy’ and ‘economics’ in a different way to how people might use these words in everyday language.
But that language gap is a serious one, seeing as the phrase ‘the economy’ is in the news every day and used to back up a lot of political decisions. It’s about time we made sure we’re talking about the same thing.
Here’s the good news… Our research is constantly showing that people come to life about economics if you just use less daunting words than ‘the economy’.
After having the privilege of speaking in-depth to over 30 people about economics so far in our research, I’m loving economy without the ‘the’ and economics without the capital E.
To sign off, here’s three great heart-warmers below:
‘I thought you were going to ask me about politics and governments and things like that which I don’t understand anything about. But we’re talking about what’s more important to me in lifestyle and understanding my surroundings and the way things work.’
‘In one sense, it’s about value of money or things, in relation to one another. That’s economy, but ‘the economy’ is that big tangled web I just talked about.’
‘The fact that it’s ‘economics’ in its own right might make it slightly more daunting, like if it was just taught in history, or like something else, do you know what I mean?’
Sounds great.
Ali Norrish heads up Economy’s research into economic experiences and how we can make economics more understandable and open for everyone.
Read more at ecnmy.org/research and get more of our upcoming research by subscribing at get.ecnmy.org/simple
