Word: rate
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...some product categories, such as LCD TVs, retailers will match cut-rate prices offered by their online brethren - Amazon and Newegg.com, for example - even if it means selling at a loss, just to get people into their stores. In other cases, they'll keep prices slightly higher but bundle in accessories and software or waive delivery or setup charges. (See how Americans are spending...
...know what you’re thinking: Pointless paper shuffling, deeper deficits. Where do people get the nerve to suggest more bureaucratic mess? Creating another cabinet-level department would waste precious time, energy, and resources. On the other hand, the unemployment rate is into double digits, and we need to flesh out some fresh ideas for recovery...
...true - and all, for the most part, beside the point. After decades of investment in an educational system that reaches the remotest peasant villages, the literacy rate in China is now over 90%. (The U.S.'s is 86%.) And in urban China, in particular, students don't just learn to read. They learn math. They learn science. As William McCahill, a former deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, says, "Fundamentally, they are getting the basics right, particularly in math and science. We need to do the same. Their kids are often ahead of ours." (See pictures...
...true. But the other side of that equation is that the U.S. needs to save more. For the moment, American households actually are doing so. After the personal-savings rate dipped to zero in 2005, the shock of the economic crisis last year prompted people to snap shut their wallets. Now that it's pouring, in other words, American households have decided to save for a rainy day. The savings rate is currently about 4% and has gone as high as 6% this year. (See TIME's photo-essay "A New Look at Old Shanghai...
...China, the household-savings rate exceeds 20%. It is partly for straightforward policy reasons. As we've seen, wage earners are expected to care for not only their children but also their aging parents. And there is, to date, only the flimsiest of publicly funded health care and pension systems, which increases incentives for individuals to save while they are working. But China, like many other East Asian countries, is a society that has esteemed personal financial prudence for centuries. There is no chance that will change anytime soon, even if the government creates a better social safety...