CRISIS AVERTED!

California isn’t on the brink of bankruptcy.

Their public unions haven’t passed Illinois and Maryland’s as models of corruption, featherbedding and incompetence.

Their education system doesn’t give New York’s a run for it’s money as a two-tiered money pit.

Their society isn’t becoming an almost third-world example of the wealth gap between Malibu and Riverside.

That’s why they’ve got time for this kind of thing – a ban on long cash-register receipts:

Modeled after a new state law requiring that plastic straws be given in restaurants only upon request, the bill would require businesses to provide electronic receipts by default unless a customer asks for a paper one.Assembly Bill 161 by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) said his bill is an easy way to reduce paper waste in the state while addressing consumers’ frustrations with excessively long receipts. Customers have taken to social media for years to complain and poke fun at the size of their receipts, particularly at CVS drugstore, posting pictures of the coupon-packed printouts measuring taller than a refrigerator.

“If we are looking at reducing waste, probably the easiest thing we can do is get rid of the material that someone hands us that we don’t want that we hold onto until we get to the next trash can and then throw away,” said Nick Lapis of Californians Against Waste, a bill supporter.

I can think of some waste to reduce…

8 thoughts on “CRISIS AVERTED!

  1. It’s a wonderful idea, but doesn’t go far enough. What should businesses do with the data they collect at government’s behest?

    The bill should require businesses to collect email addresses for customer receipts, then forward those electronic records to a government database which will link them to electronic doctor’s records required under the Affordable Care Act, so health insurance companies can tell if you’re lying when you tell the doctor “I only drink two beers a week” and raise your premiums.

    The government should share customer email addresses with candidates for political office, which will enable them to more effectively communicate and increase voter turnout by sending hourly emails updating voters on the candidates’ response to the latest Twitter outrage.

    Businesses also should be required to give customer email addresses to historically underprivileged persons suffering from a wealth disparity in other nations such as Nigeria, who can then bombard customers with endless emails about inheritances and tax liens and money stolen by dictators which the customers can claim simply by sending their bank account information.

  2. It would be interesting to compare the environmental cost of large paper receipts vs. that of having lots of receipts on the cloud. One of the nastiest secrets of big data is how much electrical power they use to create, store, and recover it.

  3. It’s also worth noting that, speaking of wasting a lot of money for bupkus, that the platform for their little choo-choo looks like the cross section for a large highway, like 3-4 lanes. If you want to know why it’s costing that much, just consider the notion of building a 500 mile long bridge in an earthquake zone of that width.

    Really, it almost seems that California suffers hugely from “notlikeothersitis”, the notion that what they do is so different from what others do, that they can ignore what others have learned. Another good example of this is the waste on the streets in San Fran, Santa Cruz, and elsewhere–is the problem simply that they think that the rules that apply to other people simply don’t apply to them.

  4. Best Buy already sends its customers through a gauntlet of “paper receipt or E-mail?” Was that a case of the free market responding to demand or trained seals anticipating the tossing of the herring?

    Mr. Doakes is painfully funny today. Businesses also known as “landlords” in Minneapolis already have to pass out voter information when renting to new tenants by City ordinance. What says “just in from Tegucigalpa” better than a voter-registration form? Why not gather “Affordable Care Act” information at the lease-signing as well?

  5. And if you block candidates from sending you their spam emails, some judge will rule that that is a violation of the candidates’ first amendment rights.

  6. I like less clutter, so I do choose electronic receipts when given the choice. A few places do, including Best Buy as pointed out above. One funny thing that sometimes happens is that despite choosing electronic, I will still get the paper receipt because either the clerk is not used to people choosing that option or perhaps I am too slow at the button.

    But, despite my preference, I agree with bikebubba- a breakdown of environmental costs would be interesting. Most people don’t understand the environmental effects of electronic production, storage, etc.

  7. Home Depot asks if you want a receipt emailed to you and makes you enter your email address. Even after you do that, the machine kicks out a paper receipt.

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