Word: credits
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...drag this time. Personal-consumption expenditures as measured by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis had grown to more than 70% of gross domestic product (GDP) in recent years, well above the 1950s-1990s average of 64%. This was an artifact of the consumer and mortgage credit boom of the 2000s, and economists ranging from Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach to White House economic czar Larry Summers had been proclaiming for several years that the percentage had to come down. It has thus far stubbornly refused, with consumer spending hitting 70.7% of GDP - close to a record...
...Economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein, who now heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, think we should go even further. In their book Nudge, they sketch a system in which once a year credit-card companies would be required to break out all the fees, interest and other charges customers paid over the past 12 months. That information would come on a person's statement as well as electronically for easier comparison shopping. "By knowing their precise usage and fee payments, customers would get a better sense of what they are paying for," write...
...beauty with that sort of system is that it doesn't impose heavy-handed rules on people who don't need them. After all, 42% of households with credit cards pay off their bills in full each month. Telling people the cost of using their credit cards, in a way they can understand and internalize, levels the playing field and lets each person make an informed, unhindered decision for himself...
...also announced that it plans to push the auto industry to make flex-fuel vehicles that run on 85% ethanol blends - and since ethanol plants have been slammed by a combination of high corn prices, the rise of cleaner technologies and the lousy economy, Washington will help them get credit...
...What, exactly, the time-tax is put to use will remain up to individual Quadlings. For instance, you may find it useful to employ your Adams resident to paint your room back to its original color, or to proofread your term paper. I intend to use my time-tax credit to make my Adams resident to walk in circles, alone...