There\u2019s a new political buzzword when it comes to talking about the economy: affordability. <\/p>\n
In the past few weeks, politicians from both sides of the aisle including President Donald Trump<\/a>, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent<\/a>, and Rep. Jim Clyburn<\/a> of South Carolina have all discussed affordability. <\/p>\n Jessica Rett, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, said \u201caffordability\u201d is \u201ca much weirder\u201d noun than \u201ceconomy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe come to it via this indirect route. It starts off as a verb: afford,\u201d Rett said. <\/p>\n From there, it becomes an adjective adjective: affordable. Stick another ending on it to make it a noun: affordable. This path from a verb to an adjective to a noun means the word \u201caffordable\u201d holds lots of adjectival properties that \u201ceconomy\u201d doesn\u2019t hold, Rett said. <\/p>\n \u201cNouns like economy often describe a bunch of dimensions all at once, but affordability is really honing in on a particular dimension,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n This means the word \u201caffordable\u201d is easier to understand, since it\u2019s just about one slice of the whole economy. All of this could add to the word\u2019s political power. <\/p>\n \u201cThe economy is something that you have to have a PhD in order to be a specialist in,\u201d Rett said. \u201cBut everyone\u2019s an expert in affordability, because it\u2019s very subjective. It\u2019s relative to their own personal experience, and it\u2019s something that they have a daily interaction with.\u201d<\/p>\n Mihaela Pintea, chair of the economics department at Florida International University, said it captures the disconnect between macroeconomic indicators, which are pretty good, and how people are feeling about the economy<\/a>, which is not so good. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople feel, \u2018But what about me?\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe somehow everybody else is doing OK, but why is it that I have a hard time just living my life?\u201d <\/p>\n Abdullah Al-Bahrani, an economist at Northern Kentucky University, said he knows people who talk about price increases on things like groceries<\/a>, child care<\/a>, and housing<\/a> when they talk about affordability.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is real wages have not kept up,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that\u2019s what the average American is complaining about when they bring up the term affordability.\u201d <\/p>\n Like Rett, Al-Bahrani described the word affordability as subjective. <\/p>\n \u201cWe spend money on different things and we have different priorities, and that\u2019s where it gets a little complicated,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n There\u2019s no one set economic definition for the term. For one person, affordability might include paying off student loans. For another, it might include feeding a family of five or paying off a mortgage. <\/p>\n People have different ways of defining affordability, but the term captures a feeling in this economy.<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a new political buzzword when it comes to talking about the economy: affordability. In the past few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[6433,138,219,102387,102386,111,139,69,135],"class_list":["post-153981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-affordability","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-linguistics","tag-macroeconomy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}