Economic Newspeak: The Weapon Being Used Against Your Wallet

Economic Newspeak: The Weapon Being Used Against Your Wallet

Can a single word decide how much tax we pay? Better yet: can simply swapping one term for another make a harmful policy seem reasonable? That is the thesis put forward in a 32-minute video circulating on YouTube that has brought an uncomfortable issue back into the spotlight.

Its creator, Cristina Soto, argues that we live immersed in a form of "semantic terrorism": a deliberately confusing use of language designed to shape the public's economic perception. It is not a new-age conspiracy; it is a technique as old as power itself. Orwell described it in 1984, but Orwell himself drew on Russian authors who had experimented with controlling language before him.

From Orwell to Pavlov: The Lineage of Verbal Control

The series of historical connections goes even further: Pavlov's conditioning experiments and the idea that words act as reflexes we can trigger at will. When a tax is rebranded as a "solidarity levy" or a spending cut as "labour market flexibility," the brain receives an instruction that does not match reality. And your wallet feels it.

Some argue that this is mere rhetoric and that the public is not so easily swayed. But the evidence of recent decades — above all in crisis management and the communication of economic measures — suggests that the terminology chosen changes the social acceptance of policies, not their content.

The curious thing is that, to find explanations this clear, you have to turn to a half-hour video on YouTube rather than economics textbooks.