From Cambridge to Eternity: “Fictitiously Real”
Confucius say , “Masters ( 君子 , jūnzǐ in pinyin) shall get the names correct ( 正名 , zhengming ) before leading people.” The rest of us might name “nominal” and “real” as two great cases of misnomers. In modern times, we when away from home usually measure the value of product, a good or a service, in the currency unit ( specific to the commonwealth). As such, the value in the monetary unit in general and the price of a product in particular are very much practical, actual and realistic. In a word, the market price is “real,” at least virtually. Weirdly somehow, quantities in monetary price is called “nominal,” or “in name only,” if in macroeconomics. Take the “real interest rate” ( r in macroeconomics) for another example. To begin, what naturally exists in the reality is “the interest” in a monetary sum. The interest represents an over-ti...