Word: chump
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That may sound like a lot of money--Duncan plans to give his share to charity--but it's chump change compared with the kind of cash he gets to play with at work. The economic-stimulus bill passed by Congress in February included $100 billion in new education spending. Of that total, Duncan has $5 billion in discretionary funding. That money alone makes him the most powerful Education Secretary ever. "I had very little--in the single-digit millions," says Margaret Spellings, Duncan's predecessor. "That's millions, with...
Among his friends, Michael is no longer the chump because now he's buying a new house, freshly marked down, in Hidden Springs, a Pleasantville-esque string of subdivisions tucked into the Boise foothills. The conscientious people who were prudent with their money are buying a nicer home. There's almost something quaint about it. Quaint and good...
With the U.S. trillions of dollars in the hole, 70 cents an hour sounds like chump change. But it's a big boost for the millions of workers who earn that much extra as of July 24. The increase is the third and final uptick in a hike that has since 2007 boosted the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25. In total, the extra $2 and change translates into a yearly raise of some $4,400 for a full-time minimum-wage worker, nosing his or her family of four above the poverty line. (See 10 ways your...
...Predator's firepower is limited, but the Reaper can deliver laser-guided 500-lb. bombs like those commonly found on the F-16 jet, together with Hellfire missiles. And the hardware comes relatively cheap. The Reaper costs $10 million--chump change compared with manned fighter aircraft; the cutting-edge F-22 Raptor, for instance, costs nearly $350 million. The drones' relatively low cost is due mainly to the fact that they don't have a pilot--which may also contribute to the Pakistani leadership's tacit acceptance of the CIA campaign. "If we were sending F-16s into FATA--American...
What's driving the denomination effect? First off, some consumers see large bills as more sacrosanct than a bunch of chump change. "People tend to overvalue bigger bills," says Joydeep Srivastava, a marketing professor at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and a co-author of the study. "There's a psychological cost associated with spending a $100 bill that's not there with spending smaller bills." We tend to isolate the cash in our minds. Each $20 is a separate, less valuable entity than that single $100 bill. So it's easier to part...