Word: worst
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Nothing says more about the American mind-set than what consumers are buying, and ignoring, at drugstores, supermarkets and mass-merchandising outlets like Wal-Mart and Target. TIME asked the Nielsen Co. to identify the best- and worst-performing product categories during this recession, and the findings are quite revealing. In general, people are buying more food to prepare at home, a function of their eating out less often at restaurants, which are suffering. At the same time, they're forsaking home furnishings and more discretionary items. "The American consumer is clearly getting back to basics," says Todd Hale, Nielsen...
...worst-performing categories include discretionary items. Cookie and ice cream cone sales dropped 9.7%; people can do without dessert, and further, the boom in baking supplies shows that more people are making treats at home. Bottled water was down 11%, but that makes sense. "What's the economical substitute for that?" asks DeMott. "It's called a tap." (See Real Simple's saving and budgeting tips...
...categories rounding out the bottom 20 are for the most part expendable. Film and cameras, whose unit sales dropped 31.5%, was the worst of the bunch. "A camera is not something you need right now," says DeMott. Plus, who really wants to remember these tough times? And if couples are using contraception, they won't need a camera to snap precious baby pictures...
...best way to protect California's coast would be to sharply reduce carbon emissions now and hope to avert the worst of the warming. But even if we do cut carbon soon, we've locked in sea-level rise, and we need to begin protecting sensitive coastlines better than we did in New Orleans. The Pacific Institute study suggests that some 1,100 miles of improved coastal defenses - including dunes and seawalls - would be needed to protect against a 1.4 m sea rise. It won't be cheap - the cost will be at least $14 billion up front, according...
...performance-based bonuses. This is only fair: A higher quality of work should be rewarded with greater pay, just as it is in nearly every other career. Merit pay incentivizes greater teacher effort, encourages high-achieving college graduates to become teachers, and makes it easier to identify the worst teachers and fire them. This improves overall teacher quality and benefits students...