The art of political rhetoric is to hide, euphemize, or reframe taboo tradeoffs. Finance ministers can call attention to the lives a budgetary decision will save and ignore the lives it costs. Reformers can redescribe a transaction in a way that tucks the tit for tat in the background: advocates for the women in red-light districts speak of sex workers exercising their autonomy rather than prostitutes selling their bodies; advertisers of life insurance (once taboo) describe the policy as a breadwinner protecting a family rather than one spouse betting that the other will die.37
