Fiscal versus Physical, and something else

Fiscal: TWO syllables. FISS-CUL

Physical: THREE syllables. FIZZ-UH-CUL

Too many football players say the word physical with only two syllables. Too many economists say the word fiscal with three syllables. These people are specialists. How can they confuse those words? How dare they!

Here's another one:

Systemic: Three syllables. To me the word means within the system.

Systematic: Four syllables. To me the word means regularly and repeatedly, as if the result of a basic misunderstanding.

If a problem is "systemic" (three syllables) it means the problem is within the system.

If a problem is "systematic" (four syllables) it means the problem is that you misunderstand the system.

In the realm of economics, the difference between "systemic" and "systematic" is particularly important: Is there a problem with the economy, or is the problem that we misunderstand the economy?

Unfortunately, economists too often use the word "systemic" when they mean (or should mean) to say "systematic".

Conveniently, their mistake leads them to think that there is a problem in the economy instead of in their thinking.

The narrative

I remember being in, I dunno, grammar school, and learning the words noun and verb and adverb and adjective and like that. Noun and verb I got, the thing and the action. As for the rest... I got the idea that you stick an extra word in there to modify the noun or modify the verb and that's cool, that makes sense, and that's as far as I got. I know that there are adverbs and I know that there are adjectives, but I'd have trouble picking them out. I bring this up because...

I don't know what a "narrative" is. Well it's a story I guess. But I don't have a feel for what the word means.

But just now I was reading Tim Duy and writing, and I read:

I have been puzzling over this from Paul Krugman:

Donald Trump won the electoral college at least in part by promising to bring coal jobs back to Appalachia and manufacturing jobs back to the Rust Belt. Neither promise can be honored – for the most part we’re talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but to technological change...

Is this the right narrative? ... Try to place [it] in context with this from Noah Smith:

Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, the U.S opened its markets to Chinese goods, first with Most Favored Nation trading status, and then by supporting China's accession to the WTO. The resulting competition from cheap Chinese goods contributed to vast inequality in the United States, reversing many of the employment gains of the 1990s and holding down U.S. wages...

Let me suggest this narrative: Sometime during the Clinton Administration, it was decided that an economically strong China was good for both the globe and the U.S. Fair enough. To enable that outcome, U.S. policy deliberately sacrificed manufacturing workers ...

A "narrative" is a story. I see it: Krugman is telling one story, and Tim Duy is telling another. I get it now.