At the same time, a new consumer brief from the Society of Actuaries suggests how much wealth you should have for coverage to make sense.

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On Thursday, the Nationwide Building society said that consumer confidence in the UK had fallen to "a low ebb" in December.

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He was designed to stuff the discarded stuff of our consumer society into himself, squeeze it into dense cubes and stack the cubes into piles.

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Companies struggle to keep up with demand for the essentials of a consumer society.

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Unneeded surgery "is an enormous scandal, white-coat crime as far as I am concerned, and it is just being ignored, " says Charles Inlander of the consumer group People's Medical Society.

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Fashion has become the motor of our consumer-driven society.

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The site, which was developed by the Business Travel Coalition, American Society of Travel Agents and Consumer Travel Alliance, invites travelers to share stories about surprise fees and sign a petition protesting them.

MSN: Hidden fees have airline passengers in a frenzy

Almost all other letters, however, just bring up the names of companies and products, a kind of comment on a consumer society.

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It is a paradox that, in spite of dramatic increases in life expectancy and improvements in health in the developed world over recent decades, as a society we are obsessively preoccupied with the specter of hazards lurking in our environment and consumer products.

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They spray the names of their gangs on walls and compose rap songs, about everything from Brazil's consumer society to Bob Marley.

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