Word: us
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...also realize that part of what got us here was overspending, and that that overspending was fostered by a shopping culture that uses cheap goods to hook people on feeling like they're winning at something. As a country, we held nearly $1 trillion in credit-card debt this time last year-about the same as the value of all the goods and services produced in South Korea annually. We've bought so much stuff that we've struggled to find places to fit it all. The U.S. went from having 300 million square feet of self-storage space...
...recent numbers show signs of a return to our old ways. In October, consumer spending rose 0.7% over the previous month, according to the Commerce Department, which is particularly interesting since personal income only edged up 0.2%. It seems it's going to take more than economic calamity for us to realize that perhaps we should be more prudent with our money...
...Katz says the busiest stores, from a traffic perspective, were Apple, GameStop, Toys R Us and Best Buy, although the retailers with the most people carrying shopping bags were department stores...
Humans have expended a great deal of intellectual energy over the past few thousand years trying to understand the morality (or amorality) of seeking pleasure. Most of philosophy begins with the question of what defines the (or a) good life. But what if the answer to what makes us happy comes down to how much of a particular chemical is circulating in our brain at any particular moment...
...brain will expect from it in the future. Researchers think the extra shot of dopamine may aid learning - that is, it boosts your brain's learned association between pleasure and whatever experience you're thinking about at the time. Or perhaps, the authors speculate, the extra dopamine makes us simply want something more while we're imagining it. In other words, it would be useful to have a bit of L-DOPA handy now, while you're preparing for your future visit to the in-laws' over the holidays...