Tony Twine
A wise woman once told a class of students attending their first lecture on the subject that economics was nothing more than common sense made difficult.
With the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, her students can now vouch for this rule, which has turned out to be far more immutable than the supposed laws contained in all the economic literature of the world.
But in her definition lie the seeds of confusion. Common sense turns out to be not too common. When it’s added to the combination of politics and economics, one has strange and unwilling bedfellows.
To hide the fact that their discipline is no more than common sense, economists have created a thicket of esoteric mumbo-jumbo.
Each year, at budget time, politics and economics emerge from their disease-infested swamps to do brief battle in full public view.
The conflict rages from the equinox to the winter solstice, when the combatants and their parliamentary cohorts retire to hibernate through the winter of labour discontent. During the battle, the main slings and arrows used to outrage the unfortunate taxpayer come from the vocabulary of the economics of government, scattered like pearls before the electorate.
As with any other compartment of language, terms change their meanings over time, so here is a glossary of budget terms which may have changed in meaning since you last looked them up.
Gross domestic product: Pronounced GDP. A growing amount of work done from home, where it can be kept out of sight of the taxman.
Keynes: Pronounced Canes. Roman consuls carried a bundle of rods (canes), which symbolised their executive power. The 1930s phonetic equivalent taught United States president Franklin D Roosevelt to create employment by digging holes and filling them in again.Today we pay a fuel levy for similar works along the road to nowhere.
Marx: Pronounced Marks, not Marcus. A pretentious way of saying and spelling targets (targetz). One who achieves his/her stated targets is referred to as a Marxperson rather than a Marxist, for the sake of political correctness.
Marginal tax rate: Pronounced ouch! Orwellian double-speak for the most dangerous edge of tax policy. It sounds less important (that is, more marginal) than it really is. It is the tool by which the progressive-tax system increases the proportion of tax levied on each rand earned as you make progress, or the government’s way of rewarding mediocrity.
Medium-term framework: Any period of time extending beyond the next election, after which the Cabinet will change, and the new crowd will opt for different priorities.
Bracket creep: Somebody you don’t like, and whose parentheses were probably not married.
Net borrowing requirement: The amount you need to borrow over and above what you need to borrow to pay back previous borrowing. If you did not get that one, you are not paying proper attention.
Deficit before borrowing: What you need to cover expenditure before you borrow it. After you borrow it, the deficit increases, because of the interest burden.
Balanced budget: What executives promise legislators will come into effect immediately after their term of office expires (see “clintonomics”).
Fiscal discipline: Calling for tenders for a box of pencils, while spending millions on textbooks that never get printed.
Provincial budgets: Within a unitary state, central government’s political shock absorber for the repercussions of economic promises which it cannot meet.
Given the political imperative of winning elections, the common touch did not squeeze out the common sense from the 1998 budget.
Tony Twine is a director of the independent consultancy Econometrix