How It's Used

"Robin Hood used cunning and disguise to pursue income redistribution. During his time at the Treasury, Gordon Brown made tax changes so bafflingly complex that few noticed (at first) how he siphoned money from the haves to the have-nots. Now Mr Brown is prime minister, and it seems that his stealthy social democracy extends to public services, too. Days after ministers had launched a quiet review of business-backed academy schools, it emerged yesterday that another of Tony Blair's controversial policies was to be drastically pruned. The move to ditch seven private medical treatment centres (six of which were still at the planning stage) is a victory for common sense - an overdue recognition that NHS cash should not be wasted on contracts offering miserable value for money. But nervous of being seen as rowing back from reform, ministers drew little attention to this welcome break from the past."

"'Sweeney' is, after all, a blood bath, though not one without a political dimension: It's a revenge tragedy -- the vengeance of the have-nots on the haves. (In Hal Prince's original Broadway production, 19th-century London was depicted as a dreary, hierarchical hellhole.) 'The history of the world, my sweet,' Sweeney sings in 'A Little Priest,' the song in which he and Mrs. Lovett hatch their diabolical kitchen plans, 'is who gets eaten and who gets to eat.' It's just that the brutal wrong done to Sweeney mutates from justifiable anger at his corrupt tormentors to a hideous determination to annihilate the human race."

"Forget about gold and platinum. One part of the credit-card industry is dazzling investors with Teflon.

"A huge profit jump reported by MasterCard Inc. yesterday showed how much the slowdown in consumer spending is dividing credit-card companies into haves and have-nots. While card issuers like banks face deepening trouble from customers who can't pay their bills, MasterCard and rivals that process electronic transactions still are raking in blockbuster profits from the global shift to plastic and away from cash and checks."

“At intervals over the past two decades, Gallup has asked Americans whether the United States is a society divided into 'haves' and 'have-nots.' Back in 1988, more than 70 percent of Americans rejected this description. This year, the country split evenly: 49-49. When asked, 'Are you better off than you were five years ago?' only 41 percent of middle-class Americans say yes, the worst result since pollsters started asking the question half a century ago.”

"Want to know who won't graduate from high school? It's the kids who're still struggling with reading in Grade 3. “The research is very clear,” says Julia O'Sullivan, dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario. She calls reading the “golden key” that separates the haves from the have-nots. And too many kids don't have it."