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Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy
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After everything that’s happened, how is it possible that conservatives still win debates about the economy? Time and again the right wins over voters by claiming that their solutions are only common sense, even as their tired policies of budgetary sacrifice and corporate plunder both create and prolong economic disaster. Why does the electorate keep buying what they’re se
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Hardcover, 256 pages
Published
September 25th 2012
by PublicAffairs
(first published September 1st 2012)
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Start your review of Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy
Anat Shenker-Osorio takes on a number of issues with the way that liberals and progressives communicate. She argues that the Left is often clear on what it’s against, but is seldom clear about what it is for. The Left gets bogged down with long explanations instead of short sound bytes. The Left is polite and civil and consequently looks weak and defensive. And many on the Left “continue to operate under the long-disproven notion that simply conveying well-researched truths will persuade; we cli
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The book is focused on the spin and messaging of economic and political ideas according to which side is using them, with the conservative side being the target of this avowed progressive writer. The writer, a communication expert, is doing an excellent job at analyzing the political language and its conveyed meanings, but the share of the economics analysis itself is less than 20% of the book content, which unfortunately is leaving not much meat. She is attacking the irrational belief that word
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I found this book fascinating. It deals with two subjects I find interesting, economics and language. The author talks about the use of language around the economy in the United States and how that use feeds the political arguments around the economy. She is progressive politically and shows how the conservatives language is dominant right now and how progressives can work to change that.
Right now the dominant view of the US economy (and indeed economy in general) is as an entity unto itself. So ...more
Right now the dominant view of the US economy (and indeed economy in general) is as an entity unto itself. So ...more
This is not a book about the economy; it is a book about propaganda. It is also a reflection on how Americans accept and expect to be coerced by language. After all, we are constantly bombarding with advertising, targeting our vulnerabitlites with half-truths, trying to coerce us into buying products. We accept this as normal. This book reveals the machinations of political speech, which according to Shenker-Osorio, has been mastered by conservatives. However, Shenker-Osorio employed this very t
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Once again, Anat Shenker-Osorio has blown my mind! 🤯 The economy is always one of the most important issues in politics come election time, yet progressives don’t have a cohesive vision for what that looks like, let alone how to communicate that vision with our values. She points out the ways by which we disadvantage our cause by adopting conservative talking points, and I feel stupid for not having seen those myself but they’re so ingrained in how we talk about the economy. And then she lays ou
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Loved this! It's a book about how we talk about the economy. I've long loved the mantra -language matters. And the gap between progressive actions and language often feels large. Especially when conservatives wield language so effectively. So Anat Shenker-Osorio does a great job of exploring all the different ways language impacts our perceptions of the economy.
One of my favorite parts was how we use military language and personification to talk about the economy as if it were alive. I especiall ...more
One of my favorite parts was how we use military language and personification to talk about the economy as if it were alive. I especiall ...more
The writing was insufferable. Anat spent so much time lecturing, lambasting, and deconstructing other people's words that I lost my patience. I skipped ahead to try to figure out what Anat is actually recommending and found her recommendations to be absolutely buried inside pages and pages of petty point-scoring prose. I got more out of reading Adam's review below than out of the book. If Adam's page number citations are correct, Anat's meaningful recommendations mostly occur in the 43 pages bet
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A really critical view of the narrative of people when using terms such as “crisis” or anything else. The messages are unfavorable because terms such as “change” to flatten the perception. It’s all about terminology, phrasing and so on.
Solid message, but this 200-pager could gave easily been reduced to 20.
Explaining our economy
Anat provides clear convincing language to explain how the economy can be led by ordinary people for the betterment of the majority instead of the very few. She uses clear terms to deflate the myth that the economy operates by the "magic" of unfettered unregulatuion. Her humor is wickedly funny. ...more
Anat provides clear convincing language to explain how the economy can be led by ordinary people for the betterment of the majority instead of the very few. She uses clear terms to deflate the myth that the economy operates by the "magic" of unfettered unregulatuion. Her humor is wickedly funny. ...more
Awesome, super important book! I am a liberal (radical?), and Anat makes such a compelling point about how we talk about the economy. We seem to have ceded so much ground to the dominant narratives, which Shenker-Osario clearly and cleanly shows to be heavily conservative in nature and metaphor. We need to revise our language! This is important! So grateful for this book.
Alongside my adoration of this book, I have two related observations: 1) the book does not touch too explicitly on race, and 2 ...more
Alongside my adoration of this book, I have two related observations: 1) the book does not touch too explicitly on race, and 2 ...more
Works strongly with the George Lakoff "Metaphors We Live By" insofar as we reduce discussing the economy to slapping ill considered labels on it and fail to notice the entailed metaphorical presuppositions that come with said labels. The book is more at a 3.5; but, overall I did not find it as strong as Lakoff's own books nor as penetrating as "Bowling Alone". The author glances at the need for sustained dialog; yet just misses showing how to accomplish real, reflective dialogs amongst disparate
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Shenker-Osorio provides concrete guidance for how we notoriously verbose liberals should clean up our language when it comes to talking about the economy. We can still be smarty pants, but she builds the case for her guidance by showing how we've made a bit of a metaphorical muddle in our descriptions and explanations about what we want the economy to do and mean in 21st Century America.
Also, she's very funny and readable, so you can edify yourself and have a few laughs. ...more
Also, she's very funny and readable, so you can edify yourself and have a few laughs. ...more
An excellent book arguing economic progressives need to be aware of and break out of the prevailing discourse that has people serving the Economy.
It's an American book, but is just as relevant in any other country with a fiat currency and politicians who push an austerity line and claim we can't afford social equity - and that's most of us. ...more
It's an American book, but is just as relevant in any other country with a fiat currency and politicians who push an austerity line and claim we can't afford social equity - and that's most of us. ...more
So-So. Preaching to the choir about how the language of economics and related political pressure is very much related to language use and manipulation of people through the use of emotionally charged words
Mind and speech altering read on how humans communicate. Breaks cognitive learning/understanding down and provides frameworks to examine our language through. One of those books I will read again and again.
Anat is a badass. I love her dry humor throughout the book. For anyone interested how to talk about the economy simply and effectively, this is a MUST read. I never thought I'd laugh out loud when reading a book about the economy. Loved it.
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Great insights written clearly, and yet while the book is short, it felt little padded. And yet there are very few books that actually directly guide my professional life and this is one, so hard to begrudging a bit of padding. Everyone should read it, even if they can skim a little after a while.
Mar 07, 2014
Holly
added it
Anat is a damn engaging public speaker with sharp analysis and practical ideas. Book didn't really do it for me though, v focused on US economic justice narratives.
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The Frank Luntz of the left that no one's heard of yet. Shenker-Osorio breaks down why the way we've been talking about the economy is precisely why we've been losing the argument.
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