Word: year
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...benefits have flowed in both directions. Take Walmart. By some estimates, over the past several years, the retailer alone has accounted for 15% of U.S. imports from China, which would mean in excess of $30 billion this year. As those goods enter the port of Long Beach, Calif., they require American workers to offload them, American trains and trucks to ship them and American workers to sell them. None of those facts are visible in the trade statistics, yet they are real. And take a company like Schnitzer Steel of Oregon, a once regional company that collects and sells scrap...
...China to many Americans, and they will speak of cheap and potentially dangerous products, unfair trade practices, human-rights violations and outsourcing. Mention the U.S. to many Chinese, and they will speak of arrogance, mismanagement of the economy and hypocrisy. One of the most popular books in China this year is China Is Not Happy, and the source of that unhappiness is an overly dependent relationship with the U.S. The two governments share some of those anxieties. Beijing worries that the continuing struggles of the U.S. economy will impair a $338 billion market for its exports and imperil its dollar...
Companies have long promoted healthier behavior by subsidizing gym memberships and smoking-cessation classes. But several private and public employers have started tying financial incentives to their health-insurance plans. North Carolina this year became the second state to approve an increase in out-of-pocket expenses for state workers who smoke and don't try to quit or who are morbidly obese and don't try to lose weight. Alabama was the first to pass what critics call a fat fee, in 2008, and several state insurance plans have started imposing a $25 monthly surcharge on smokers...
...Heel State in particular has been criticized for using a big-stick approach. Starting in July, state workers who smoke will be moved from the plan that covers 80% of health care costs to one that pays 70%, an out-of-pocket difference of approximately $480 a year, unless they agree to enroll in a smoking-cessation program...
...state will turn its attention to the obese. Workers who have a body mass index (BMI) below 40--e.g., someone who is 5 ft. 6 in. and weighs 250 lb.--can remain in the 80% plan for the first year. But after that, they need to either have a BMI of 35 (5 ft. 6 in., 217 lb.) or enroll in a weight-loss program to qualify for the less expensive plan...