New Economic Initiative Would Require Companies Go Back To Naming Products What They Do Plus ‘O-Matic’

WASHINGTON—In an attempt by the think tank to find a model for sustainable growth of the U.S. economy, a new initiative proposed Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute would require companies to go back to naming products by combining what they do with the suffix “O-Matic.” “Our research shows that businesses create more value for the American economy when they take a word that describes what they do—say, investing—and then, in that case, make their brand name Invest-O-Matic,” said EPI senior fellow Ronald Wong, who found the suffix could increase company revenues by 400% within the first year after its adoption, and sometimes more if the number 5000 was placed at the end of the name. “It’s unclear why we abandoned this time-honored naming standard in the first place. It’s simply counterintuitive to call a multicooker an Instant Pot, for example, when it could be called a Cook-O-Matic, or to call a robot vacuum a Roomba instead of a Vac-O-Matic. Facebook would be a trillion-dollar company by now if Mark Zuckerberg had possessed the foresight to name his social media platform Friend-O-Matic.” Wong added that the federal government could help encourage the new initiative by requiring all aerospace and defense contractors who do business with the U.S. military to call their products the Death-O-Matic 5000.