His anti-corruption campaign helped reduce officials' extravagances such as mistresses and Ferraris and was heralded as lifesaving shock treatment for a toxic societal cancer.
They are trying to do so by reducing the extravagances that swelled the payroll in the first place.
One of his manifesto promises was to reduce the cost and extravagance of bidding for the Games, but his first task as president has been to oversee the most opulent Olympics in history.
Known as the "mass line campaign," it seeks to address extravagance and corruption among party officials and reduce behavior that "divorces the party from the masses," according to the state news media.
Or we can cure their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance.
"The extravagance of it has been reduced to reflect the downturn in the economy, but what I hope this does is bring out people to see that the American auto industry can survive".
His country had been reduced to a desert by famine and war, and his own reckless extravagance had plunged him deeply in debt.
We choose these extravagances even though they impede beneficial long-term outcomes, such as saving threatened species, or reducing the intensity of climate change.
The extravagances and incredible social tensions of Edwardian England, belle epoque France and robber baron America seemed for ever left behind, but Piketty shows how the period between 1910 and 1950, when that inequality was reduced, was aberrant.
