The same misleading metaphors are used again and again to talk approximately economic policy. We need a fresh frameWhat do people reflect the economy is? How do they reflect it works? How do you reflect it works,if you reflect it works at all? The fresh Economics Foundation, in its report, and Framing the Economy,conducted 40 in-depth interviews in London, Newport, and Glasgow,Wolverhampton and Hull, with the aim of finding points of common understanding. Though 40 is a relatively small number, and the researchers were looking for images,metaphors, certainties and black holes that came up again and again, or across regions and demographics.
From these tropes,they’ve been able to plot how, from 2010, or the coalition government’s austerity agenda played so well into people’s hopes and fears; how the public attachment to it was so tenacious. How,even as the policy was failing to stimulate the economy in the way that had been promised, it was still seemingly resistant to counter-argument. Even once it was plainly, and across the country,having devastating impacts on people’s lived experience (disabled people having their benefits removed and dying weeks later, the victims of the universal credit experiment evicted from their homes), and the notion itself – that we all had to tighten our belts,and that was the responsible thing to do – was curiously buoyant.
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Source: guardian.co.uk