Joe: A recent poll found 64% of Americans see 'big government' as the biggest menace to the country. Only 26% said 'big business'—even right after a financial crisis caused by, well, big business. Lewis: That's wild. It’s like blaming the fire department for the fire. How does that even happen? Joe: What if that isn't a policy failure, but a storytelling failure? This is the central question in Anat Shenker-Osorio's fantastic book, Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy. Lewis: Oh, I've heard of her! She's been called the 'magical message whisperer' for progressive causes. She’s not just an academic; she's in the trenches, figuring out why certain messages land and others just completely whiff. Joe: Exactly. And her first big target is this bizarre, almost religious way we talk about the economy. She argues that the words we use aren't just descriptions; they're instructions. And we've been following some very bad instructions. Lewis: A religious way? What, are we praying to the Dow Jones now? Joe: You're not as far off as you think.

Joe: The book's first major insight is that we constantly talk about the economy as if it's a living being, or even a deity. It has moods—it can be 'unhealthy,' 'sluggish,' or 'pissed off.' It has needs, and it demands things from us. Lewis: Okay, I can see that. You hear it all the time. "The market is nervous today." As if it's a chihuahua that heard a loud noise. But a deity? That feels like a stretch. Joe: Does it? Think about the language of 'sacrifice.' Politicians from both sides of the aisle stand up and tell us we all need to make 'genuine sacrifices' to get the economy back on track. The book cites examples from Mitt Romney to Tom Coburn. It’s a constant drumbeat. Lewis: Right, 'tighten our belts.' Which is always a 'we' statement, but somehow the belt-tightening only seems to happen around the waists of regular people, not the corporate jets. Joe: Precisely. And this is where the analogy gets really powerful. If the economy is a god, then it needs high priests to interpret its will. And who are they? The bankers, the CEOs, the talking heads on financial news. They tell us what the great and powerful Economy wants. And what it usually wants is for us to have less and for them to have more. Lewis: This is starting to sound familiar. Is there a good story that shows this in action? Joe: There is a perfect one, and it's from a place you'd least expect: South Park. The book points to the episode 'Margaritaville' as one of the most brilliant pieces of economic satire ever made. Lewis: Oh, I love that episode! Lay it out. Joe: So, the town of South Park is in a massive economic downturn. Everyone's losing their money, their jobs, everything. They gather in the town square, completely confused, trying to figure out what went wrong. After a lot of debate, one of the town elders, Randy Marsh, comes to a profound conclusion. Lewis: Which is? Joe: He declares that the 'Economy' is a vengeful, angry god. And it's angry because they have angered it with their frivolous spending. They haven't shown it proper respect. Lewis: This is amazing. So what do they do? Joe: They do what any pious follower would do. They renounce their material possessions. They start wearing bedsheets as togas, they stop buying things, and they begin preaching a message of austerity. They literally start walking around saying, "The Economy is angry." To appease it, they eventually decide they need a human sacrifice. Lewis: They don't actually... Joe: They try! They try to sacrifice one of the characters on a giant ATM machine altar. It's absurd, it's hilarious, but the book's point is that it's a perfect mirror of our real-world discourse. We treat the economy as this external, angry force that we must please through our own suffering. Lewis: Wow. When you put it like that, it's not just funny, it's deeply unsettling. Because you hear that logic every day. "We have to make these cuts to social programs to restore consumer confidence." It's the same idea! We're sacrificing the well-being of people to make an abstract concept 'happy.' Joe: Exactly. We're told to have 'faith' in the system. Dissenters are treated like heretics. And we're made to feel that the problems are our fault for not being pious enough, while also feeling completely powerless to fix the system itself. It's a perfect trap. Lewis: Okay, so if that's the wrong story, this 'Economy as a God' narrative, why do we keep falling for it? And more importantly, what's the right story?

Joe: That is the million-dollar question, and it brings us to the book's second core idea. It’s not about having better facts or policies; it's about having better stories. And the building blocks of those stories are metaphors. Lewis: Metaphors? That sounds a bit... English class. We're talking about trillions of dollars and global markets. How much can a metaphor really matter? Joe: It matters more than almost anything else. Shenker-Osorio points to a mind-blowing study by Stanford psychologists on this very topic. They wanted to see how a simple metaphor could change people's minds about a complex issue: crime. Lewis: Okay, I'm intrigued. How did they do it? Joe: They gave two groups of people the exact same statistics about rising crime in a fictional city. The numbers were identical. But there was one tiny difference. For the first group, the introductory paragraph described crime as a "beast preying on the city." For the second group, it described crime as a "virus ravaging the city." Lewis: Beast versus virus. Okay. Joe: Then they asked everyone how the city should respond. The results were staggering. The people who read the 'crime is a beast' metaphor overwhelmingly wanted to fight back. They proposed hiring more police, building more jails, and enacting tougher sentences. They wanted to hunt the beast and cage it. Lewis: That makes sense. And the virus group? Joe: The 'crime is a virus' group had a completely different approach. They wanted to diagnose the root causes. They proposed investing in education, fixing the economy, and addressing poverty. They wanted to treat the illness, not just the symptoms. Lewis: Whoa. So changing a single word changed the entire solution people came up with. The metaphor wasn't just flavor—it was the whole recipe. It was pre-loading the answer. Joe: It's the whole recipe! And this is the core of Shenker-Osorio's argument. Conservatives have been masters at this. They use simple, powerful metaphors. The 'free market' is a classic. It sounds pure, natural, and something you shouldn't interfere with. 'Tax relief' implies that taxes are an affliction, a burden you need to be relieved of. Lewis: And what do progressives do? Joe: Too often, they come to a story fight with a spreadsheet. They present a 10-point policy plan full of data and nuance. They try to 'educate' people. But as the crime study shows, if the underlying metaphor is working against you, your facts will bounce right off. You've already lost before you've begun. Lewis: So progressives are bringing a calculator to a knife fight. Joe: A perfect metaphor for the problem! The book argues that progressives need to stop just complaining about the conservative story and start telling a better one of their own. They need their own powerful, simple, and emotionally resonant metaphors. Lewis: Like what? If 'the economy is a god' is bad, what's a good one? Joe: The book suggests a few, but one of the most powerful is thinking of the economy as something we build. It's a machine, or a garden, or a recipe. It's not a natural force we have to obey; it's a human-made system that we can, and should, design to produce the outcomes we want. Lewis: I like that. It immediately gives you a sense of agency. You don't 'appease' a garden, you tend to it. You make sure everything in it gets enough water and sunlight. You pull the weeds that are choking out the other plants. Joe: Exactly. It changes the entire frame from one of powerlessness and sacrifice to one of responsibility and creation. It's no longer about what the economy demands of us, but what we demand of our economy.

Lewis: So what's the big takeaway here? Are we all just doomed to be manipulated by whichever side tells the catchier story? Joe: The book's message is actually incredibly empowering. It’s not about being doomed; it’s about becoming conscious of the stories we’re being told and the language we use ourselves. The economy isn't a god, it isn't a force of nature, and it isn't a wild beast. The book suggests a simple, powerful alternative: the economy is a car. Lewis: A car? Joe: Think about it. We built it. It’s supposed to take all of us where we want to go. If it’s only taking the people in the front seat to their destination while everyone in the back is getting thrown around and the whole thing is spewing pollution, you don’t just praise the driver. You demand to look under the hood. You fix the engine. You might even need a new driver and a better map. Lewis: That's a fantastic frame. It puts the power right back in our hands. It's our car. Joe: Exactly. And Shenker-Osorio says the first step is just to notice the language. When you hear a politician say we need to 'appease the markets' or 'make sacrifices for the economy,' recognize it for what it is: a story designed to make you accept the status quo. It’s an attempt to take the keys out of your hand. Lewis: It's like what the writer George Orwell said: "The restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." The obvious thing here is that we built this system. It's supposed to work for us. Joe: And if it isn't, we have the right and the responsibility to change it. The book is a call to arms, not with weapons, but with words. It's about choosing our metaphors as carefully as we choose our policies. Lewis: So the question for all of us listening is: what story are we buying? And maybe more importantly, what story do we want to start telling? Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.