Learn Everything You Need to Know About the Economy from a 'South Park' Episode

By Anat Shenker-Osorio

October 1, 2012  |  Editor's Note: In her new book Don't Buy It: The Trouble With Talking Nonsense About the Economy [3], communications specialist Anat Shenker-Osorio makes a compelling case for why progressives have to find a better way of talking about the economy if we ever hope to set things right. In a presidential election where voters' preferences often hinge on language, telling the right story with the right words is as important as getting citizens to the polls. Below is an excerpt from the preface of this handy guide that can help make policy discussions -- not to mention dinner table conversations -- a lot more clear and effective.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. -- Exodus 20:13

Many of us are daily left wondering how to make sense of the contradictions we personally experience and hear about the economy. The news tells us the recession ended in 2009, but unemployment has proven stubbornly stable. Pundits contend we’ve seen the end of the housing bubble, but home prices in most places won’t budge and foreclosures continue. Our growth rate has registered positive since the summer of 2009, but poverty levels are also on the rise. What’s going on, what will happen next, and how do we even begin to make sense of the economy?

I’m here to save you some boring. There’s no need to actually read long economic treatises, sit through lectures, or decipher expensive textbooks; you don’t even have to bother scrutinizing the graphs on the Wall Street Journal business page to learn what’s going on right now with the U.S. economy.  It’s simpler than you think: all you need to know about the economy you can get from cartoons—a single show, in fact.