> Money and time aren't always fungible
Things don't have to be fungible to be cumulative.
> Starting software engineers bill out at $100 an hour.
Billing rates are irrelevant because time and money are not fungible. For example, I can read the newspaper on the train for 25 minutes each way, but it isn't possible to productively use that time for much else because of the constraints of the environment, so the value (i.e. opportunity cost) of using that time is much lower than most other times.
Also, most New York Times readers are not software developers. The average American hourly wage is less than a quarter of the one you're using.
> The claim that a price cut to something that only contributes 1.7% to the total cost is going to make reading the newspaper worth it is ridiculous on its face.
Amdahl's law explains why this is wrong. If you pay $2000/month for a mortgage, why squabble over $40/month difference in the interest rate? Because $40/month is $40/month. You gain more by reducing a $2040/month expense to $2000/month (even though it's only a ~2% reduction) than by reducing a $20/month expense to $1/month (even though it's a 95% reduction). The percentage of the total is completely irrelevant.