{"id":6116,"date":"2010-07-22T07:44:42","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T12:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=6116"},"modified":"2010-07-22T07:52:32","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T12:52:32","slug":"a_modest_proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2010\/07\/a_modest_proposal.html","title":{"rendered":"A Modest Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s face it &#8212; pennies are annoying.  Even if you don&#8217;t use them to clog up your sofa, it&#8217;s a pain to try to get ride of them. So this story about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.silive.com\/northshore\/index.ssf\/2010\/07\/stores_self-checkout_machines.html\">a thieving Home Depot automatic checkout machine on Staten Island<\/a> made me think that best way to fix New York&#8217;s budget problems may be to &#8220;spare the change&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>On July 6, the reporter bought a screw priced at 56 cents. The tax was 5 cents, for a total of 61 cents. With 75 cents inserted, the receipt indicated 14 cents change due but just 12 cents popped out.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, the reporter bought a pack of key caps priced at $1.27. The tax was 11 cents, for a total of $1.38. The reporter put in $1.55 and got back just a nickel and two pennies.<\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, a senior manager in Home Depot&#8217;s public relations division promised that a team would be dispatched to evaluate the machines&#8217; operation.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Who knows how much money might be raised by invoking a temporary &#8220;spare the change&#8221; tax on all cash purchases. We&#8217;d see rising productivity in the retail sector &#8212; less change to count! In a time when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/ny_local\/2010\/07\/13\/2010-07-13_mta_plan_for_limited_unlimited_metrocard.html\">the MTA is considering making Orwellian changes to the meaning of &#8220;unlimited&#8221;<\/a>, it makes sense . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s face it &#8212; pennies are annoying. Even if you don&#8217;t use them to clog up your sofa, it&#8217;s a pain to try to get ride of them. So this story about a thieving Home Depot automatic checkout machine on Staten Island made me think that best way to fix New York&#8217;s budget problems may [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follow_the_money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6118,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions\/6118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}