The “R” Word

The U.S. economy is in trouble, with prices rising and GDP declining over the last six months. Traditionally, economists would call this a recession, but instead something strange is going on. The White House, fearing accountability for its policies, is trying to change the definition of what constitutes a recession, with the support of social media fact checkers and even Wikipedia. Politicians trying to spin bad news is nothing new, but this wholesale Orwellian revision of what words mean is particularly disturbing to anyone who cares about reality. Whatever you want to call it, the truth is that American workers are suffering and no amount of linguistic game-playing will change that.