The lost opportunity costs of what you could have done with that extra value or smaller expense is exactly how much you have impoverished the local economy.

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Nordic countries, for example, are already worrying that next winter, as in this one, they will find their sleeves being tugged for fuel, food and medicine by local governments in impoverished towns in Russia's desperate far north.

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In Padang, an impoverished industrial town in Sumatra, local officials have simply seized a cement plant that the central government wanted to privatise.

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The nonprofit, which helps build first-rate facilities in impoverished nations and sends surgeons to train local health providers, consisted of only one paid employee.

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But sympathetic coverage from local newspapers has helped persuade officials not to leave the impoverished patients to the mercy of the health system.

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