Word: thrifting
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...Frugal Life I commend Nancy Gibbs for using her column to state what we are unlikely to hear from any elected official: that thrift is an important virtue and that our failure to practice it has helped bring on the current economic collapse [Oct. 13]. Those who lived through the Great Depression endured a scare that prompted them to scrimp and save, something the current generation does not do. Now Americans generally believe they are entitled to whatever they want without regard to whether they can afford it. The list of what we have come to consider necessities would stun...
...exception, perhaps, of India), it is virtually unthinkable that an individual from a minority could rise to become a serious national leader. Whatever we may think of the U.S., of its hardly stellar handling of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, of its lack of oversight, restraint and thrift over the financial meltdown, the fact that a Barack Obama can overcome the disadvantages associated with being black and have a shot at the highest office in the land speaks volumes about the possibility of hope in America - a possibility that cannot be entertained in the same way anywhere else. Even...
Somewhere along the way, THRIFT did not just stop being a value; it became a folly. Saving was for suckers; you'd miss the ride, die leaving money on the table when you could have lived it up. There are no pockets in a shroud, as the saying goes. We once saved about 15% of our income. By the roaring '80s the rate was 4%; now we're in negative numbers. Bob Hope liked to joke that "a bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it." But that...
George W. Bush has never been reluctant to frame policy debates in moral terms, targeting an "axis of evil," casting tax cuts as the removal of "unfair burdens" on hardworking people, calling tariff reduction a "moral imperative." But THRIFT is one virtue he never invokes, and a restoration of restraint is a strain of conservatism he seldom promotes. In fact, it was after the most tragic day in modern U.S. history, when Bush urged people who wanted to help to "go shopping," that profligacy officially replaced prudence as a patriotic duty...
There's no way to tell during this current distress whether we're repenting or just retrenching. THRIFT-store sales are up. Cars are shrinking. P. Diddy retired his private jet to save on gas. In hard times, people often rediscover the peace that prudence brings, when you try to spend a little less than you have because tomorrow might be worse. But that feels almost un-American; we're optimists by nature, and we've been living large for so long that solvency feels like a sacrifice. It will take some sustained character education--and leadership--to understand that...