Word: effective
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...risk of creating a situation where it never goes away. If a tax credit - or any other economic benefit - sticks around long enough, people start feeling entitled to it, even if it was originally supposed to be temporary. In academic literature this is called the endowment effect. Taking away such a program once it's ingrained can be a monumental political challenge. It's not just that expanding the home-buyer tax credit would cost $50 billion to $100 billion this year. It's that it could easily wind up costing that every year...
...More Things Change ... Re "How the Taliban Thrives" [Sept. 7]: Our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is comparable to placing one's hand in a pail of water. When you stick your hand into the water, you create an effect. When you pull it out, the water returns to its original state. While we occupy those countries, we suffer casualties and financial disaster. Once we leave, everything will return to the way it was before: tribal wars, traditions and culture. We will have accomplished nothing. You cannot change thousand-year-old cultures into democratic states in a few years...
...equitable society. His regime succeeded in providing the world's largest population with food to eat, housing and basic services. Social vices were eliminated, literacy was expanded, life expectancy increased and infant mortality decreased. These were no small achievements. But Mao's efforts to impose socialism had a deadening effect on urban and rural society alike, as political movements repeatedly harassed different groups of people...
...example, has not seen health-care spending drop since instituting award caps in 2003. While a 1996 study said caps could cut costs up to 9%, the Congressional Budget Office stated in 2008 that it had "not found sufficient evidence to conclude that practicing defensive medicine has a significant effect" on spending...
...group Islamic Jihad. "If the Israelis stop all their attacks, there will be no rockets from [Islamic] Jihad and the other big movements," al-Nounou said. Islamic Jihad and other Islamist groups are believed to be behind almost all of the rocket attacks since the cease-fire came into effect. Though there is some suspicion that Hamas may have had a hand in one or two, it has not claimed responsibility for any post-cease-fire rockets launched into Israel...