The Dutch economy s poor prospects are similarly alarming.

Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users.

More interesting, and in a way far more disturbing, has been the reaction in the US to the Boston bombings, which killed three people and injured 264.

Also, it is important to avoid the situation where a change might be more upsetting to users, long term, than living with the known problem(s) (where the cure would be worse than the disease ).

This brings us to a third, and even more unsettling possibility a longer and more protracted negotiation, resulting in greater disruptions to government entitlement payments, other contractual obligations, and public services.

More perniciously, because small banks, unlike big ones, paid for most of the costs of their failure through an insurance fund, small banks were given local monopolies, for fear that vigorous competition would lead too many to fail.

But there is also a more troubling possibility if, by proceeding on our current profligate path, we succeed in making natural resources scarce, we will require a new wave of technology, regardless of the cost, to rescue us from calamity.

The Dutch economy s poor prospects are similarly alarming. The Netherlands is second only to Germany in the volume of credit that it channels through the so called Target 2 system to the eurozone periphery, and it is the periphery s largest creditor in per capita terms.

So the right slogan in this campaign might be, It s the living standards, stupid. Or, more accurately (though more cumbersomely) It s the perception of future living standards, stupid, and the perception of fairness surrounding those prospects.