JARGONIST JANUARY 29, 2013
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EXAMPLE: "You cannot grow this economy from the top down. You grow this economy from the middle class up."—Barack Obama
Who is to blame for the habit, so common in Washington these days, of referring to the nation's net worth as something akin to a Chia Pet in need of watering? The president, Paul Ryan, and Arianna Huffington have all reached for the phrase. It appeared 45 times in The New York Times last year, compared with just eight times in 1992. That was the year that Bill Clinton popularized the phrase on the campaign trail, irking both grammatical strict-constructionists (who claim that "grow," at least in this sense, is an intransitive verb, and so oughtn't take a direct object) and small-government aficionados who were bugged by the implication that the economy's health was at the mercy of federal intervention.
"Grow the economy" may seem like empty language, but it actually represents a movement away from talking about the economy as a machine, so dominant through much of the twentieth century—we've got to prime the pump so the economy can be firing on all cylinders—and toward talking about it as something akin to a garden in need of tending. Eric Liu, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, believes that the financial meltdown has made this vision of the economy "much more intuitive for people." The Bank of England even brought on an ecologist who specializes in what happens when natural systems are interrupted by human interference.
The beauty of the phrase, however, is that the grammatical switcheroo from plain old "economic growth" turned out to be yet another Clintonian triangulation. Previously, economists who talked about the economy in organic terms tended toward a Darwinian outlook, in which nature would take its course. This lent itself well to the laissez-faire school of thought. But "grow the economy," with its implied human control, can accommodate both a big-government liberal's view of where growth will come from and a pro-business conservative's belief in fertilizing "job creators." "It makes sense that politicians would like the idea that a vast, complex thing like the economy in the twenty-first century can be managed from Washington," says Princeton economist Tim Leonard. If only there were so much agreement on how the thing ought to get watered.
WHO USES IT? Presidential candidates, speechwriters paid by the word, and pundits with a flair for mimicry.
4 comments
I think there's an implicit distinction being drawn between those who simply want economic growth as a kind of condition and those who want to grow the economy because that process will relativize the debt, improve revenues as well as employment prospects and consumer spending, and put deficits into a real historical perspective. There seems to be a new unwillingness among conservatives to even admit there is such a thing as 'the economy,' perhaps because to concede that it exists is to concede more than just the fact that business does well and does badly from time to time. The economy is not just the aggregate of rats-in-the-maze activity but the sum of creativity and security for millions of people.
- ironyroad
January 29, 2013 at 1:40am
My memory is that Reagan started using the phrase grow the economy. I remember his use of it, my being irritated with its use, and it conjuring the image of a huge zucchini.
- Nusholtz
January 29, 2013 at 7:23am
From the article: "If only there were so much agreement on how the thing ought to get watered." Watering the economy is a matter of putting government policies in place that encourage growth. There is a reason that American's work 50% more than Germans, French and Italians. It's because it pays. And our taxes on the next dollar are roughly 45% lower than the EU. And as a result, our productivity dramatically outpaces Europe and in turn the middle class in the US have much more disposable income than Europe. Most dramatic: The US middle class post-meltdown posted more gains since 1990 than a French middle class family pre-meltdown. Let that soak in. It's staggering in its implications.
- seattleeng
January 29, 2013 at 2:17pm
--"Growing the business" or "Growing the economy" once made me think of a little business seed planted in the ground, watered and sending up shoots. We grew tomatoes, not economies. So yes, it is an abomination of sorts but the battle is lost. Better to move on, as other comments indicate, as to what it actually means in effect behind the cloud of Clinton-era jargoneering. Or maybe it was Reagan. (It is like explaining to twenty-somethings why "sketchy" once mean vague or incomplete, or shady. But of course, shady once meant in the dark, in the shade, hidden therefore suspicious, so these things do evolve. We still have, after all, shady porches that are not at all "sketchy." And you would speak into a mike, not a mick---or rather, mic (sic), as it seems to be spelled today after eight decades as "mike," c. 1915 to 1995.)
- Atlas-Q
January 29, 2013 at 3:03pm