Do you ever get the feeling you’re being conned? I don’t mean in the normal, everyday, “Oh I just paid for a relaxing two-week holiday in luxurious tropical surroundings and now I have leprosy and am getting raped by a spider monkey” way. I mean in a deep, insidious and comprehensive way that once you discover what it is, will rock you to your very foundations and make you question the nature of reality. Ever get that sort of feeling?

I got exactly that feeling just the other day when listening to Joe Hockey, the Shadow Treasurer, discuss economics. I was listening to him, nodding along as he carried out his duties as the Queen’s constitutionally appointed representative of people who want more free money, and it suddenly struck me: this man has no idea what he’s talking about. And I don’t mean the way Tony Greig has no idea about cricket, or the way Daryl Somers has no idea what people are saying behind his back. I mean Mr Hockey clearly didn’t even know what he was supposed to be talking about, and was just making stuff up. Tossing out random words and phrases in an attempt to construct some kind of economic argument, like a man throwing scrap metal in Bamix and hoping a train comes out. “We stand by those figures at a point in time,” Joe blusters, obviously not understanding even the slightest skerrick of his own sentence. At a point in time? What the hell? Is he saying the Coalition’s economic strategy will be to travel to the past and then freeze the space-time continuum to create a budget singularity? Does he even know what “stand by these figures” means? I got the distinct impression he would, if pressed, produce a gigantic foam-rubber number and pose beside it.

And I wondered: was he just blathering because he hadn’t got up to speed? Was he just ignorant? Was just totally bereft of ideas or any conception of how to argue a case for his own policy? This seemed very unlikely, as politicians are trained to be informed and intelligent so it’s improbably that one would simply go on like this out of native stupidity. No, there was a deeper issue here, and when I weighed all the evidence, I realised what it was:

Economics is not a thing.

I mean, it’s supposed to be a thing, but it’s not. It’s a thing that’s not a thing. It’s not alone here, of course. There are many concepts we encounter in daily life that are things that are not actually things. These include, but are not limited to: fashion bloggers, baristas, key changes, molecular gastronomy, and knitting. They are things that we are brainwashed to accept as actually existing in reality, but in fact do not. And of all the things that are not things in the universe, economics is perhaps the most influentially non-thingy, the ne plus ultra of things that are not things (n.b. another thing that is not really a thing is Latin).

Once you allow the possibility to seep, quicklime-like, into your hitherto atrophied and feeble brain, the evidence piles up frighteningly quickly. Think about all the times you’ve seen economics in the news. Has ANY of it made any sense? Have you understood a single second? Think about last time you heard Wayne Swan talking. What struck you about it? That’s right – the way he randomly repeats phrases in the middle of sentences for no apparent reason. But apart from that? It’s the barrage of meaningless word salad he continually tosses, knowing that the gullible public will happily slop on some dressing and tuck in. “The forward estimates,” Swanny blithely pronounces, as if the forward estimates are anything.

Do you know what the forward estimates are? Of course not – nobody does. Ask Swan himself, and he would gibber incoherently for five seconds and then evacuate his bladder, just like he did at the last APEC meeting. “Forward estimates” is just a buzz phrase, invented by government spin doctors in an attempt to justify their massive salaries and sleek, full bellies. In fact, if it weren’t for inventing things that aren’t things, spin doctors would be a thing that isn’t a thing.

In actual fact, Wayne Swan, when he discusses the economy, has no idea of the meaning of the words he is saying. He is like Celine Dion singing in English. When he says, “We will have the Budget in surplus by 2013”, he might as well be reciting the phone book. He doesn’t know what “surplus” means. Nobody else does either. They’ll tell you it’s got something to do with money, but that’s as far as it goes. Even if they knew what the surplus was, they wouldn’t know whether we had one, because nobody knows how much money there is. There’s gazillions of money in Australia, as if anyone can keep track of it all!

I’m telling you, economics is a crock, dreamed up by the politico-media complex to keep us docile and un-rebellious, much like the opium Anna Bligh puts in Queensland’s water supply. Think about the stock market. Make sense? Of course it doesn’t! Like all economic things, the stock market is not really a thing. Oh, you start buying little bits of companies and like magic the price rises? Oh yeah, OK. Maybe if I break a bit off the Westgate Bridge, it’ll make my car faster too – FANTASYLAND.

What does this mean for the ordinary mouth-breathing Australian i.e. you? Does it mean we are all doomed to poverty and sorrow? No, no more than usual. In fact it means we can all relax a bit. Instead of treating economic news as foreboding and portentous, we can treat it more like free jazz – just pleasant background noise. “Oh, the cash rate is up 25 basis points?” you can say airily. “Well doo-bee-bop-ski-doo-da, daddy-o!”

But it also means that we have to always be mindful of the truth of the world, of the inner workings, of the man behind the curtain. If we are to make an informed decision about our political and fiscal future, it is absolutely vital that we recognise two basic facts: economics doesn’t really exist; and politicians are as big a bunch of morons as we are.

Feel better?

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