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ANNUITY: The receipt of payments at regular intervals from a established fund. Annuities are commonly used for insurance and retirement programs. It works in this way: A fund, which can be established either through a one-time sum of money or a series of payments, is exhausted over time with fixed, periodic payments. The amount of each payment depends on the interest accrued on the outstanding balance in the fund, and the length of time scheduled to exhaust the fund. For example, if your pension plan is based on an annuity that begins payments at the age of 65, then the size of the payments depends on whether you expect to live 5, 10, 15, or more years and set up payments accordingly. It's very similar to amortization, but in the reverse direction.
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                           DISMAL SCIENCE: A term for the study of economics developed during the late 18th and early 19th century when economists concluded that continued population growth would push wages and living standards to a minimal subsistence level and keep them there. It persists to the present time because economics continue to point out that actions result in opportunity cost, that nothing is free, and that eventually society has to pay the price for what it does. The notion that economics is a dismal science emerged out of the work of several late-18th and early-19th century scholars, most notably Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo.As Malthus, Ricardo, and their contemporaries pioneered the development of the economics discipline, they pondered (among many things) topics like population, the supply of labor, and worker wages. In so doing, they concluded--erroneously as it turns out--that continued population growth would push wages and living standards to a minimal subsistence level and keep them there. According to these early economists, the prospects for humanity were bleak, miserable, and well... downright dismal. Not Too DismalWhat they failed to adequately consider, however, were technology, capital investment, and limited population growth. Technological advances, by improving the quality of capital and increasing the skills of labor, made workers more productive, leading to increased wages and boosted living standards. Continued capital investment had a similar result. In addition, as living standards rose, people chose to have smaller families, which resulted in lower rates of population growth, which also led to increased wages.Dismal ScarcityAlthough the human condition is not nearly as bleak as anticipated by Malthus and Ricardo, economic dismality persists largely due to the persistent problem of scarcity. Combining unlimited wants and needs with limited resources means that everyone cannot have everything that they want. While politicians and others are fond of telling people what they can have, economists are generally in the position of telling people what they cannot have.The bottom line is that the human condition can improve and living standards can rise, but complete utopia is unlikely.
Recommended Citation:DISMAL SCIENCE, AmosWEB Encyclonomic WEB*pedia, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2025. [Accessed: July 7, 2025].
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Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time looking for a downtown retail store hoping to buy either a Boston Red Sox baseball cap or a square lamp shade with frills along the bottom. Be on the lookout for mail order catalogs with hidden messages.
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Rosemary, long associated with remembrance, was worn as wreaths by students in ancient Greece during exams.
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"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. " -- Seneca, statesman, dramatist, philosopher
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