Word: contracting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...economic earthquake. That consensus was carried into the expansion of the 1960s but then rolled back in the 1980s. "Most people may want to see welfare reformed," says Mitchell, "but a by-product of that is the widespread notion now that you're on your own. The old social contract that there will be help in bad times is disappearing...
...politicians who are dismantling that social contract have had to find cheaper ways to address the insecurity that voters express. Bill Clinton is a master at playing to people's fear of losing control. He offers cell phones to citizen patrols and television ratings for absent parents. As more and more corporations shovel workers into managed-care programs, Clinton unveils a new patient "bill of rights": "I think it's fair to say that almost every family feels some insecurity at the scope and pace of change in the world," he said. "There are so many people in this country...
...these glorious times, I pledge a generous new labor contract next spring. Our shareholders may cringe at those words. But I'm flat tired of losing my top talent to competitors. Our dollhouse team moved on to bigger things: building real houses in the Sunbelt. The Gap poached hundreds of our point-of-sale reps, signing them to lucrative deals to man its cash registers. Nintendo wooed away our Year 2000 computer debuggers to design next-generation Diddy Kong. In today's tight labor market, such skills are tough to replace. I've located a few jobless elves in Asia...
...Biggest About-Face In January the National Cancer Institute sparked a fire storm when it did not recommend that women in their 40s have annual mammograms. In March it reversed itself, endorsing the tests. With 1 out of 8 women likely to contract breast cancer, the turnabout looks medically and politically smart...
Many people who falsify their experience, says author Sissela Bok, rationalize that "it helps me and it hurts nobody." They do not think about the qualified person who didn't get the job, the book contract, the government appointment. You have to wonder about the state of mind of the already successful people who lie when they know how easy it is to be tripped up. Are they self-loathers who want to bring themselves down, knowing they would get found out sooner or later anyway? Or are they overtaken by grandiosity, the need to be at the center...