Why politicians should stop talking economics

The federal election campaign has had its zigs and zags so far: headlines have ranged from Syrian migration to social media breakdowns. But if there's been a constant theme since the writ dropped, it's the economy. Technical recessions, budget surpluses, corporate tax rates - those are the things the leaders really want to talk about.

Thursday's economics-themed debate gave the federal leaders a chance to flex their economic lingo but Financial Post Editor Terence Corcoran sees little value for the electorate, in political discussions about economics.

(The full interview is available in the audio player above. The following portions have been edited for clarity and length.)

First off, you are the editor of the Financial Post so people are going to be surprised at this - but why do you think the leaders should NOT be talking about economics on the campaign trail?

Well, my point is that economics is just too nebulous, imprecise, statistic-laden and weirdly policy-oriented that it's not possible to get ideas across in any sensible way. It's not even possible to talk about whether we're in a recession in a sensible way because the definitions are imprecise, the way people think about what a recession is is vague and fuzzy -- it has different meanings to all kinds of people -- and the overriding problem is the assumption is that these politicians somehow control the economy; that they can go in there and somehow play around with this policy and that policy and at the other end we'll get more jobs, more growth, et cetera. It's just not really true. I mean, they can do little things here and there, maybe to mess around and make things a little bit better or a little bit worse (more often the case) but the economy is run by the competitive market system; business runs the economy and politicians pretend they can control it or can influence it in a significance way -- but they can't.

How would you describe the kinds of conversations our leaders have been having about economics? 

They're not conversations about economics at all; they're debating points based on somebody's accusation about whether the economy is sliding into depression or recession; as to whether the deficit of 8 billion or 10 billion or zero or a surplus is better... I went back and watched a couple of earlier debates -- and they're all available on YouTube: the 1968 debate, 1979, 1993 -- these economic issues cropped up in the earlier debates but they weren't the focus... They moved on to issues of substance. And by substance I mean issues of policy: what should the health care policy be for the government, what should the immigration policy be. There's no room for getting into a slinging match over how big a deficit is good or bad for the economy. 

Now Thursday's debate, the entire focus was the economy -- and you could see how it would make sense to the organizers when every poll has shown that that's the number one issue, according to Canadians. So what was the economic takeaway from Thursday's debate?

There wasn't one. Now when pollsters come up with this idea that the economy is what concerns Canadians most, what Canadians mean is that they want jobs: they want their income to be rising, they want stability in their lives -- that's what they mean by the economy. They do not mean, trying to figure out what is the best economic policy for Canada. I mean, it's just beyond the kin of the average person, let alone the average journalist and even a lot of the average economists, to figure out what exactly is the right policy for government to be pursuing. The whole premise of that debate... was that the government can somehow, through some vision, through some grand strategy, determine where the economy is going to go over the next four or five years... It's not the government's job to figure that out. And for some reason, they seem to enjoy trying to answer the question, even though they're not really doing anything constructive in terms of putting forward meaningful policies -- the types they should be focusing on.

Click the blue button above to listen to the full interview.