Word: scarcer
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That assessment, if anything, understates the level of disillusionment. Soviet products that have often been in short supply, like meat and butter, are scarcer than ever this year. In the Russian Republic, the Soviet region that is home to about half the country's population, meat available at state stores is so scarce that 1 out of every 3 consumers obtains a ration card to ensure a supply. Now, however, everyday items like good shoes and toilet paper are also missing from the shelves. Shoppers in Moscow are queuing for laundry detergent, and last week the capital was virtually bereft...
...cleaning up acres of landfills and lagoons of liquid waste. But few nations have been able to formulate adequate strategies to control the volume of waste produced. Moreover, there are precious few methods of effective disposal, and each has its own drawbacks. As landfills reach capacity, new sites become scarcer and more expensive. Incinerators, burdensome investments for many communities, also have serious limitations: contaminant-laden ash residue itself requires a dump site. Rising consumer demands for more throwaway packaging add to the volume...
...that could bring about a serious breach between the generations. Already the emerging power of America's grandparents frightens many of their children and grandchildren. Some experts forecast a costly confrontation, in which embittered young people and embattled older ones fight with the most sophisticated political weapons over ever scarcer resources. In the shorthand of demographers and journalists, the scenario is known as the age wars...
Since the 1890s, the Salvation Army has made a Christmas tradition of collecting money for the needy. But the Army's shiny red kettles and bell- ringing workers are growing scarcer on the West Coast. Fearful that the bell ringers will set a precedent for other solicitors, up to half the shopping malls in California and Nevada have barred them. In protest, parishioners from nearly 100 churches in the Bay Area are boycotting some of the malls. A few owners have relented and allowed the kettles near the entrance of their stores. Nevertheless, since the kettles collect an average...
With money scarce, and goods even scarcer, a diplomat observes, "crooked deals multiply until they ensure that the economic plan can never work." Some people take photos, fix jalopies or do typing on the side; others simply try to resell the goods they manage to procure. The rampant finagling is only encouraged by a bureaucracy with so many hands that none is likely to know what the others are doing: in a Havana telephone directory, the list of ministries takes up 77 pages...