Word: booms
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...Though the country has had something of an economic boom of late, the blush is off the rose. Prices are rising and blackouts common. Extremist groups have gained power-last week an Islamic court in the tribal areas sentenced and executed four people for adultery. Towns in the northern provinces bordering Afghanistan are run by a Pakistani Taliban that has shut down barbershops, girls' schools and polio-vaccination programs. In Islamabad, students from the fundamentalist Jamia Hafsa seminary have occupied a children's library less than a mile from the Parliament building. Abdul Aziz, head of the Lal Masjid mosque...
...executive travelers and manufacturers laud the global corporate jet boom, the FAA, airline groups and commercial airlines are less enthused. They contend that not only do corporate jets add to traffic congestion in the airspace, but the six types of taxes that are built into commercial passengers' ticket prices effectively subsidize the aviation system and facilities used by corporate jets. By one estimate, various fees and taxes paid by commercial passengers have totaled $104 billion over the past decade. Corporate jets, on the other hand, pay only about 6% in taxes and fees for flying and for using the federal...
Meanwhile, local government revenues - which ballooned lavishly over the past five years as the real estate boom pushed local tax collections up 82% - would be rolled back to 2006 levels, with additional cuts of up to 9% depending on each government's past spending habits. That prospect has predictably raised the hackles of mayors and county managers. But state legislators - including a large contingent of Democrats - appear unsympathetic. "This is not so much a cut," says Republican state Senate Majority Leader Daniel Webster, "as it is bringing local governments back to reality." But critics remind the legislators of another reality...
When change does come, sales of imported whiskies are sure to boom. In the lobby of the five-star Grand Hotel in New Delhi on a recent Sunday night, businessmen J.P. Goenka and N.R. Pillai enjoy 12-year-old Glenfiddich at $8.50 a shot. "Those who can afford it drink it. But for most people, it's still too expensive," says Pillai. "It's a sort of a status symbol," says Goenka, each finger encased in a nuggety ring. "India has a massive middle class ready for this sort of thing, but it's still perhaps just a bit beyond...
...most people are deeply pessimistic—even in the midst of the ’90s economic boom, two-thirds of Americans thought that “the lot of the average person is getting worse.” On the left, Utne-reading Luddites condemn materialism and consumerism, longing for a squalid, pre-industrial past. On the right, conservative nativists fear immigration and social change—god forbid we lose the WASP culture that made this country great. And elites across the spectrum bemoan the base popularization of high culture...