Unlike standard economics, Unicornonomics avoids the quantitative. This applies to any forecasts, projections or results. This specialist subfield of economics is favoured by politicians and the media that promotes them. It has a particular resonance with Brexiteer politicians and Brexit supporters.
Instead of trillions, billions, millions or percentages, Unicornonomics uses the terms, huge, massive, enormous, substantial, big, normal, ‘a drop in the
ocean’, bit and tiny. Precise
time frames, such as year are also avoided. ‘A few years’, ‘a decade or so’, ‘recently’, ‘the short term’, ‘the medium term’, ‘the
long term’, ‘the foreseeable future’, ‘a generation or so’ are standard Unicornonomic
time frames.
One exception to this nomenclature is that ‘fifty years’ may be used in substitute for ‘the
long term’.
The following examples illustrates the difference between Unicornonomics and standard economics:
Standard economics: “GDP declined by 6% year on year in
quarter three.”
Unicornonomics: “GDP went down a tiny bit recently. It was a drop in the
ocean.”