Word: hellings
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...hell of a world when the best defense for spending a trillion dollars and adding to the national debt is that it needs to be done to preserve a trillion dollars in revenue to the Treasury from individuals and companies which would otherwise be too crippled by the economy to pay taxes...
...stop spending the rest. "Once that barrier is passed, it's like a dam gets broken," says Srivastava. "And we've found that when people decide to spend, they'll spend more with the bigger bill than with the smaller bill." Researchers have labeled this phenomenon the "what the hell" effect: "I've broken the hundred; it's gone from my wallet. What the hell, I may as well blow off the rest." So consumers, afraid that the "what the hell" effect will drain their wallets, hold on to those large denominations. (See pictures of expensive things that money...
...what the hell" effect even crosses the Pacific. The researchers ran a similar test in China that yielded comparable results. They gave 150 housewives 100 yuan that they could either save or use to buy soap, shampoo, bedding and pots and pans. Half the women received the 100 yuan in a single bill, while the other half got it in the form of a 50-yuan bill, two 20-yuan notes and a 10-yuan bill. More than 90% of the women who received the smaller bills spent the money. Meanwhile, just 80% of the women given a single note...
...nation. Our moxie comes in two basic types. We possess the Yankee virtues embodied by the founders: sobriety, hard work, practical ingenuity, common sense, fair play. And then there's our wilder, faster and looser side, that packet of attributes that makes us American instead of Canadian: impatient, hell-bent, self-invented gamblers, with a weakness for blue smoke and mirrors. A certain fired-up imprudence was present from the beginning, but it required a couple of centuries for the most extravagant version of the American Dream to take hold: starting with the California Gold Rush in 1849 - riches...
...utterly international nature of our present economic hell makes it all the scarier. But in the long run, I think we will also see an upside: the meltdown amounts to a spectacular moment of global consciousness, this generation's version of the Apollo astronauts' iconic 1968 photograph of the earth from the moon - an unforgettable reminder that all 6.7 billion of us are in this together, profoundly and inextricably interdependent. (The sublime always has a bit of terror mixed...