The Dodd-Frank Act directs the SEC to pay a person who voluntarily provides original information leading to a successful enforcement action a share of the money recovered, where sanctions exceed a million dollars. Not protection from retaliation, though that exists too. Payment. The law attaches a financial reward to pushing information out.
FYI
American email produced a three-letter abbreviation for sending information to someone who did not ask for it and need do nothing with it. It is one of the most-used abbreviations in American business correspondence. The message exists solely to transfer knowledge, and the sender writes it knowing there will be no reply.
Need to know
The phrase exists in American English and comes from military and intelligence practice, where it is a legitimate principle. Used anywhere else, it is an accusation. Describing a colleague as operating on a need-to-know basis is a criticism of that person, and they will hear it as one.
Ask your doctor
The United States and New Zealand are the only high-income countries that permit direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. American pharmaceutical companies spent $6.58 billion on it in 2020, up more than tenfold from 1996.
The standard closing line of every one of those advertisements is an instruction to the patient: ask your doctor about it. The system is built on the assumption that the patient will raise the subject, not that the physician will.
The jury
Twelve ordinary citizens, selected at random, with no training in law, decide questions of fact — and in the United States they do so in civil cases as well as criminal ones, far more often than in any comparable system. The verdict is not reviewable on the facts. The credentialed authority in the room instructs on the law and then waits.
The buck stops here
Truman kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office reading exactly that, and used the phrase repeatedly to describe the presidency. The buck is passed, in American usage, from one person to another. The sign announces where the passing ends — at a named individual, in a specific room.
The DRI
Directly Responsible Individual. Apple’s internal practice attaches a single name to every item on a meeting agenda, and the name is visible to everyone. American project management more broadly insists on one accountable person per item, and the phrase single throat to choke is used without embarrassment.
Not my job
The phrase functions in American workplaces as a serious accusation rather than a statement of scope. Saying it about someone marks them as having seen a problem and stepped around it — which, in a culture where the person nearest the problem is expected to take it, is a charge of failure rather than a description of their role.
Owner
Product owner. Process owner. Account owner. Risk owner. Problem owner. American organizations name roles after possession of the thing rather than responsibility for a function, and the word carries the expectation that the owner acts without being asked.
Pro se
Americans represent themselves in court in substantial numbers, and the courts accommodate it. Small claims courts are designed for it, often barring lawyers outright. The premise is that an ordinary person can conduct their own case against another party, and that the system should make that possible rather than discourage it.