This study seeks to demonstrate the subtle ways in which changes in the language associated with economic issues are reflective of a gradual but quantifiable conservative ideological shift.

In this rigorous analysis, David George uses as his data a century of word usage within The New York Times, starting in 1900. It is not always obvious how the changes identified necessarily reflect a stronger prejudice toward laissez-faire free market capitalism, and so much of the book seeks to demonstrate the subtle ways in which the changing language indeed carries with it a political message. This analysis is made through exploration of five major areas of focus: ‘economics rhetoric’ scholarship and the growing ‘behavioral economics’ school of thought; the discourse of government and taxation; the changing meaning of ‘competition, ‘ and ‘competitive’; changing attitudes toward labor; and the celebration of growth relative to the decline in attention to economic justice and social equality.