The more I grapple with big challenges in public policy, the more I think our language holds us back. We use the same words year after year — abstract nouns like inequality, consumer choice, or the Republican Party — even as the subjects of these words change beyond recognition.
It’s a phenomenon I call semantic drag — our words are fixed, their subjects drift — and I think it explains a lot of our public policy woes.
In politics, it means our debates get left behind by reality, like a couple so lost in argument they don’t realise everyone else has gone home.