Word: surpluses
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...True contesters, like Mrs. Haley, look down on sweepstakes. "There are no skill contests left. It's driving me nuts," she says. Most of what Mrs. Haley wins she sells at half price to her Florida neighbors or gives away to her relatives. To get rid of the surplus she also advertises in the Clearwater Sun and in the local Laundromat. Toward the end of every year she hoards the loot in anticipation of inflated prices as the holidays approach. Occasionally the bargaining is tense, as it was last Christmas when she unloaded two microwave ovens and a camera...
World War I virtually wiped out a generation of British males. The slaughter in the trenches claimed three-quarters of a million young Englishmen and helped produce the "spinster bulge" of the '20s and '30s, when Britain had a surplus of nearly 2 million women, most of whom were never able to marry...
...crunch should come in the mid-1980s, when the men born at the tail end of Britain's postwar baby boom begin looking for brides in the smaller pool of women born during the 1960s. That prospect worries many population experts. They point out that a large surplus of males can bring increases in prostitution, homosexuality and serious crimes. In fact, most felonies are committed by young unmarried...
Some Britons think their countrymen will somehow manage to muddle through, as always: men might simply marry later and become more reluctant to divorce. Indeed, the unflappable London Times says that the surplus may well be a healthy sign. It editorialized recently: "A society that rears relatively large numbers of these fragile males to maturity is by definition stable, peaceful and advanced in medical knowledge...
...once a oneway ticket to an ivy turret. No more. With declining college enrollments, fewer faculty openings, low starting salaries and little chance for tenure, college teaching has lost much of its allure. Even worse, a Mellon Foundation study estimated that by 1990 the U.S. will have a surplus of 60,000 Ph.D.'s in the humanities...