The world ‘real’ betrays the vacuousness of political slogans. Think ‘real alternative’, ‘real change’ or my personal favourite: “Real plans for real people”. It is total fluff.
But in economics, ‘real’ means something quite specific. Real salaries are different because they are adjusted for inflation. Who cares how much your wages have risen if your living standards have fallen? To amend a famous phrase, nominal wages are for vanity, real wages are for sanity.
