Word: leveller
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Lookout is the entry-level position for nine- and ten-year-olds. They can make $100 a day warning dealers when police are in the area. Sometimes the pint-size apprentice is rewarded with the most fashionable sneakers, bomber jacket or bicycle. The next step up the ladder is runner, a job that can pay more than $300 a day. This is the youngster who transports the drugs to the dealers on the street from the makeshift factories where cocaine powder is cooked into rock-hard crack. Finally, an enterprising young man graduates to the status of dealer, king...
Right now, not much. Not jobs: while manufacturing employment has declined in the past seven years, the Reagan Administration has gutted the budget for training and employment programs, which provided crucial assistance to disadvantaged young people. The minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest level since 1955; in cities like New York and Los Angeles, minimum- wage service jobs will hardly pay for food and clothing, let alone an apartment and a car. Between 1979 and 1987, the number of hourly workers toiling at less than poverty-level wages ($9,464 for a family of three) jumped from...
...figures, however, make the Japanese look considerably more openhanded than they actually are. Tokyo's growing generosity is largely a function of the yen's almost twofold appreciation against the greenback since 1985. According to the OECD, Tokyo's aid level in 1986 increased 48.4% in dollar terms but only 4.8% in Japanese currency. Moreover, Japanese development assistance has traditionally included a higher percentage of loans, as opposed to outright grants, than...
...road barricades and harass the army. "It's like a job," says Mahmoud. "This is their daily business." The striking units in his camp work from 10 to 6 every day, he says. "Now we are establishing new units to work at night." At this street level, there is relatively little factional rivalry or outside supervision. Only occasionally does each representative turn to his headquarters for orders. The closest thing to an outside agitator is Mahmoud, whose additional responsibilities as a "regional leader" take him to the rural areas in his sector to help set up new popular committees...
Like many oil-patch authorities, Hance sees dark portents in today's fuel bargains. "If prices continue at this level, there will be very little new U.S. well drilling, and imports will rise," he argues. According to his commission's projections, imports will reach 50% within the next 18 months and 65% in 1991-92. Says Hance: "Then I can see gasoline at the pump costing $2 a gallon." That projection, even if it represents an extreme scenario, sure takes the fun out of driving at 65 m.p.h...