1,651 karma · joined August 14, 2013
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/10/mac_address_randomi...
Want to bribe a public official? Give his wife a $100k bracelet, and mention that it can be returned anywhere in the world for CASH (less a 10% “restocking fee” of course). Then you might mention how nice it would be to spend a weekend in Geneva - and coincidentally there is a branch of that jeweler just down the street from some very discreet Swiss bankers (back when they were discreet)...
Obviously some of these costs scale very cheaply, but there is quite a bit that goes into a modern bank account+ some customers are costlier than others (lost of call center calls/lost debit cards for example)
Which means if a bank charges no fees - and it costs them $315 to administer your account - you need to maintain a $10,000 balance for them to break even.
Once you understand that dynamic - you understand that banks that want to offer low balance free checking - need to either make it up on fees or on cross selling opportunities...
1) is who is actually causing the congestion in NYC - its my understanding that the bulk of the congestion is caused by non-NYC residents
2) a large unaddressed component is parking - the large amount of free parking available, especially to non-residents, creates a distorting subsidy in favor of commuting in many areas.
If you want to read a great book on the broader subject, check out Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt http://tomvanderbilt.com/books/traffic/
We don't even let people from outside the city send their kids to school there.
Japan, Greece, and Italy have the highest portion of debt to GDP (235%, 182%, 133%) except that Japan and Italy are very rich countries, Greece less so...