Quote Originally Posted by Оля
Quote Originally Posted by DmitryS
Of course it can be used in "written" literature - yet mostly as "spoken" by a character
Well, I actually disagree that this contsruction strongly belongs to spoken language. You can find it in quite a serious article, for example, something like "мы никак не научимся жить по закону / по-человечески / как на Западе" etc. We can find a lot of other examples like that, with another verb and subject.
Some articles deliberately use "popular" expressions just to create more agreement by appealing to "common sense".
You never find this sort of language in a report.