Hmmm ... yet for me the usage "like it used to" sounds almost knowingly colloquial and, OTOH, in the context "as it used to" sounds simply natural and unexceptional.Nanohedron wrote:Okay, try this on for size: "A quintessentially American crime declines: Robbing banks doesn’t pay as it used to."
Grammatically correct, all of it. But at least where I live, the last clause is an entrenched colloquial idiom: "doesn't pay like it used to" (or even "[it] don't pay like it used to" if you're really getting down and dirty). Idioms are famous for grammatical waywardness, and to me that is part of their power, if that makes any sense. I use "doesn't pay like it used to" myself as a relaxed way of describing all kinds of diminishing returns, not just monetary, and because it's an idiom, a quip, I think nothing of it. So I read the above and think, Now the writer's trying too hard. In correcting the idiom, the result is far too stiff.
YMMV.
I know, I know. I'm a tough crowd.
Cultural context may be everything in this instance.