This concise, humorous book by a rising progressive communications consultant shows how the pervasive use of bad metaphors perniciously influences thinking and behavior toward the American economy, and provokes us to develop the vocabulary necessary for making informed political and economic decisions. Anat Shenker-Osorio has spent her career exploring the range of ways people understand complex political issues and she's seen one thing over and again: when we're using the wrong metaphor, we're sending the wrong message. In this book she focuses that argument on the wrong-headed and destructive way we talk about the economy in the United States. Relying heavily on language such as "unhealthy," "suffering," "recovery bill," we continually convey that the economy is something natural, like a body, the tides, or the weather. It is how it is - like barometric pressure, unemployment can be expected to "rise" and "fall." In fact, we've bought the idea that we must work without complaint and "Keep the Economy Happy!" Shenker-Osorio shows that this erroneous way of conceptualizing the economy has a real effect on the way people engage with money, and has lead to a great deal of hardship. The solution is to consciously shift the ways we talk about the economy, which can radically alter how we react to events and thus how we make rules and decisions. By speaking, accurately, of the economy as a man-made system requiring continuous man-made control we undo the damaging notion that the market is an independent force that regulates itself. By speaking, forcefully, of the economy as a structure we've developed for the pursuit of security and prosperity we can impose regulation and control to achieve certain means. Effective economic reform is going to require transparency and understanding in our conversation. This book tells us how to begin thinking and speaking more clearly.