We are accustomed to thinking of government transferring money from the well off to the poor.

Back to business as usual in France.

Too many valid choices are ignored or skirted through the routine of short cuts.

We ve continued as if the Cold War never came to an end, spending as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.

Indeed, we used to quote Ortega y Gasset If Spain is the problem, Europe is the solution.

The thing about stories, though, in most of the existing mediums that we're accustomed to things like novels, radio, photographs, movies, even lectures like this one we're very accustomed to this idea of the narrator or the camera position, some kind of omniscient, external body through whose eyes you see the story.

Nor can we claim, as we used to, that our values spring from God, nature, reason, or historical laws.

The money illusion occurs because we are accustomed to economic values almost always being framed in terms of money.

Now how do we know about an environment that's so far away, and so different, and so alien, from anything we're used to?

A billion dollars used to be a lot of money now one trillion is the new normal or to paraphrase the novel and film The Devil Wears Prada a trillion is the new ten billion!

This principle, to which all agreed, must be enforced even if it upsets old habits and comfortable incomes.

As its primary victims, we had become used to Israel crossing red lines in its continuous policy of opression and occupation.

We French may not be what we used to be, the celebrants seemed to be saying, but we are still much more than people think we are.

We have been accustomed to societies with a demographic structure that resembles a pyramid a broad youth base tapering to an elderly tip.

COPENHAGEN Advocates of drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions now speak a lot less than they once did about climate change.

Third, as usual, Israel has accused of anti Semitism those who have dared to criticize its disproportionate response to Hamas s indefensible rocket attacks and its collective punishment of Palestinians.

We may feel the pain of falling back from a level of affluence to which we have grown accustomed, but most people in developed countries are still, by historical standards, extraordinarily well off.

The one gold medal we had become used to winning since the 1920 s, in field hockey, has proved elusive in recent Games, as our players have stumbled on Astroturf.

Over the course of the years, they were the masons who built our homes, they washed dishes in the restaurants where we ate, they were the merchants from whom we used to buy goods, and workers in the greenhouses of the kibbutzim.

BRUSSELS The metaphors used during the financial crisis of 2008 2009 earthquake, tsunami, meltdown, black swan, and fallout are back with a vengeance, but now they are being recycled literally.

Referring to capital controls, John Maynard Keynes famously said what used to be heresy restrictions on capital flows is now endorsed as orthodoxy.

After many decades of Disney movies, we have been conditioned to expect princesses to fall in love quickly with their charming princes and live happily ever after. And when there are challenges or obstacles (mostly in the more recent movies), these are quickly overcome (and with humor).

WASHINGTON, DC Unlike in the past, there probably will not be large protests at the upcoming Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, or at the subsequent World Trade Organization meeting of trade ministers in Bali.

CAMBRIDGE I was in Beijing last month when the Chinese government released a preliminary summary of its 13th Five Year Plan. This is an important document for understanding where China is headed in the 2016 2020 period.

The problem is that a reduction in those extremes to which we are already well adapted provides only modest benefits, whereas the new extremes to which we are not adapted can be devastating, as recent events in Pakistan show.

We used to think that homes were in the same category as automobiles depreciating assets that grow obsolete over time, are costly to maintain, and go out of style, eventually to be scrapped and replaced.

Second, military expenditures must be cut not just funding for the fruitless wars, but also for the weapons that don t work against enemies that don t exist. We ve continued as if the Cold War never came to an end, spending as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.

Even before it vetoed a plan by eurozone countries to create a fiscal union at the European summit in December 2011, it was playing less of a leadership role than it traditionally has on key European foreign policy issues.

So, how do we keep the best of what is familiar and foster the identity of our local neighborhoods and regions while embracing the sort of changes that make most of us better off? How can we make markets and technology serve us rather than as so often seems to be true vice versa?

PARIS Kishore Mahbubani, a prominent Asian voice from Singapore, and a man often highly critical of Europe, was recently asked what Asia could learn from Europe. His reply Europe was above all the continent of peace, compassion, and cooperation.

I was of the generation in my country that lived through the transition from dictatorship to democracy four decades ago. For us, the European Union was a dream.

They were born in Gaza or pushed there as refugees during the war of 1948, or in other wars. Over the course of the years, they were the masons who built our homes, they washed dishes in the restaurants where we ate, they were the merchants from whom we used to buy goods, and workers in the greenhouses of the kibbutzim.