Word: less
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...French and Chinese have proceeded cautiously in approving the abortion pill. Both countries require that it be administered in a clinic or hospital rather than at home. To prevent casual use, the French have made it no less expensive than a surgical abortion (cost: upwards of $130). The Netherlands and England are considering approval of RU 486. Meanwhile, Roussel Uclaf, its manufacturer, has contracted with the World Health Organization to distribute the pill at low cost in developing countries...
...beauty of an event but loses something of the feeling, like a fashion shot that captures a perfect face while leaving one unmoved. Technology can make everything seem too technical: slow motion slows emotions until they seem unreal; instant replays replay the instant again and again until it means less and less, like Warhol's soup cans. Carl Lewis in flight, Jackie Joyner-Kersee in extremis are things of beauty: taken apart on the picture tube, they lose all contact with the natural...
...gymnasts seem larger than they are, the redwood basketball players smaller. And TV distances as it disinfects, replacing an event with a picture of an event, the unimaginable with an image. Most of all, TV, by breaking down miracles into their component parts, makes them somehow add up to less than the whole -- unweaves, in Keats' phrase, the rainbow...
...From 1977 to 1988, the inflation-adjusted income of the families who make up the poorest 10% of the population has declined more than 10%. The total number of people living below the poverty line fell from almost 40 million in 1960 to less than 23 million in 1973, but shot up to 35.3 million in 1983 and has remained near there ever since...
Reagan came to power largely because he promised to revive the American Dream, which he said was being strangled by high taxation. Indeed, through most of the 1970s, wages rose less than prices but enough to push taxpayers into higher brackets. The double whammy of higher prices and higher taxes cut into the purchasing power of the middle class more than into that of the rich...