The emperor's new language.

• Author: Renner, Michael
• Position: Essay - Deceptive definitions and classifications

In January 2004, Subaru announced a minor redesign for the Outback, one of the cars it sells in the United States. The vehicle frame will rise 1.4 inches higher above the road surface than the older model. But this seemingly immaterial alteration, along with a number of similarly minor modifications, will make a fundamental difference: it will allow the automaker to have its sedan reclassified as a light truck. And that means that a far less stringent fuel economy standard applies: 21.2 miles a gallon on average for the 2005 model year instead of 27.5 mpg for passenger cars.

Outback-like reclassifications could drive the final nails into the coffin of already feeble attempts to limit automotive energy consumption. Already, with light trucks capturing growing U.S. market share, average fuel economy is now at its lowest level in more than two decades. But if all passenger cars were modified to meet light-truck standards, annual gasoline consumption would rise by 30 percent or 17 billion gallons. In that case, kiss climate stability good-bye.

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The Outback incident is far from an isolated development. Deceptive definitions and classifications--blurring distinctions, creating things that don't exist, defining unwelcome facts out of existence, turning the meaning of words upside down--have become widespread, both in the corporate world and in government. Consider some of the techniques being used to confuse, deceive, or conceal:

Now You See It, Now You Don't.

Creative terminology can help governments make unemployment--one of the key challenges of our time--look less severe than it really is. If some of the unemployed aren't counted, then they cease to exist in the public eye and will weigh far less in policy-makers' considerations.

In January 2004, for example, the German government--struggling with a stubbornly high joblessness rate of around 10 percent--stopped counting as unemployed those people who were enrolled in short-term courses designed to test their aptitude and job skills. Also uncounted were "non-unemployed welfare recipients"--jobless individuals age 58 or older. Even though they receive unemployment compensation, the government has decided that they are effectively too old to rejoin the workforce and thus relegates them to a state of quasi-retirement. Germany's "uncounted jobless" add up to about 840,000 people whose plight is not reflected in the official unemployment rate.

Full Employment at One Hour per...