Fast Company - We are all guilty of using jargon. We do it out of insecurity, hoping that a certain term will make us appear more knowledgeable; out of ignorance, because we don’t know enough about the subject to speak more plainly; and, of course, out of habit or laziness.
If you work in marketing or a related field (and let's face it, they're pretty much all related now), you probably say consumers several times a day without thinking about it, never noticing that it's a characterization of those with whom you share the planet as bipedal purses whose only value is as buyers of stuff.
Our obsession with this artificial construct then translates into the larger way in which all mergers are evaluated. "They're good for consumers," because they "drive operating efficiencies and reduce redundancies in staffing," Professor Michael Noel of Texas Tech told U.S. News and World Report. A paragraph later another expert, Joshua Stager, said mergers hurt people in the labor market, due to job cuts and how reduced long-term competition between employers depresses pay and benefits.\
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