DailyGenesis.com

When you pay attention to the financial markets and all activity surrounding them, you start to see one simple pattern that pretty much guides everything.

1. Things go up — everyone’s happy.
2. Things go down — everyone starts blaming the government.

It would actually be kind of humorous if it weren’t so frustrating. It’s as if the world believes that the purpose of the market is to earn them a return of 10% per year or more, no questions asked. With so many people in our country and around the world tying up their life savings and retirement savings in index-tracking funds and equities, it’s no wonder this is the case. Somewhere along the line everyone started believing that the market would earn them better returns than their bank accounts and … well … they forgot about the risk.

That’s right. In case you didn’t know, there is risk involved in investing in equities or any other financial instrument. That risk exists whether you’re in mutual funds in your 401k or straight-out stocks in your non-retirement funds. Put your money into the market and ten years from now you might have less money than you have now.

Seriously, did anyone notice what just happened to GM. It just hit 50 years lows. Meaning that if you had put your money into old, faithful, GM fifty years ago and held on, today you’d have just about the same amount of money as you did then. No gains, not even inflationary gains.

So I guess it’s no wonder we all just scream for the government to fix things. I mean, it is our nature to blame others. It’s not unexpected, I just wish it weren’t so. Either accept the risks involved in your own financial strategy, or put your money in a bank or money market where you will get a guaranteed, albeit smaller, return.

Ok, so this is something that’s always bothered me, and I just recently discovered that I’m not alone in my concern over the issue. So very many people misuse the phrase “begs the question.” I take note every time I hear it inappropriately applied, especially in something mainstream like a newspaper or TV broadcast by journalists who should, you would think, work hard to utilize language correctly.

I did a little search on the phrase and found a whole website dedicated to setting the record straight on this. Plus, there are a bunch of other people pontificating about the problem. So, I’ll try not to be too redundant, but just say this:

“Begs the question” does NOT mean “raises the question” or “implies the question” or “makes me want to ask this other question.” It is not correct to say something like “he said he doesn’t like tomatoes, which begs the question ‘why is he growing tomatoes in his back yard?’” While that is the way most everyone uses it, it is not the actual meaning of the phrase.

The correct meaning is explained on the get it right website linked above:

“‘Begging the question’ is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.”

It is a phrase with origins in logic or argument, and it is used most appropriately in legal matters and debate. It is not a phrase that most people have need to use very often. So, the next time you are tempted to throw out the phrase in a simple colloquial context, please think twice and help preserve the true meaning of the phrase. The English language thanks you for it!