Imagine you were a big wheel down at the cracker factory before the recession hit.

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And understand that you, however, are a small cog in a big wheel.

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The economy is simply a big wheel, spinning around and around.

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The wheel wrenched out of my hand and we started over in a big arc, the right front wheel caught sideways in the clay.

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The big-wheel trend is a small one that helps designers give even everyday family cars more aggressive, racier looks.

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He started to sing again, but too fast, and Mother pounded the keys and tramped on the pedals, as though she were at the wheel of some sort of vehicle, a big wooden bus that she was driving down a steep hill with her feet and hands.

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The engineers have done a beautiful job with wind and tire noise, opting for big acoustic blankets in the wheel wells, which quelled the roar coming from our test car's 19-inch summer tires.

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Carino Vanorden, 24, was at the wheel Wednesday night when a trailer hauling crushed cars broke free of the big rig that was pulling it, cut across a rural, two-lane road and slammed into the minivan, his mother Kate Vanorden of Fayetteville said.

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Yes, it was as if an entire generation of Americans consented to hopping aboard a giant hamster wheel of accumulation, all striving toward the imaginary objective of acquiring enough stuff and a pot of money big enough to sustain a comfortable level of consumption through to the grave.

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