Discover how one family's recent recycling scheme in California pocketed millions, sparking questions about the effectiveness of incentives in shaping economic behavior.
This sounds like a situation of indirect incentives to me, unless there a rule against importing cans and bottles in to California. If not stated explicitly, I don't see how these folks will end up with anything other than lawyer bills, which should be reimbursed by the state. It seems the scam here is that California imposes an extra fee that many people do not recoup because they don't recycle their cans. That's a rather large fund balance held by California.
Since when did we start abbreviating the state of Mississippi with "Yes"? They get 3 letters but poor Massachusetts and Connecticut don't even get abbreviations at all, even though they are 2 of the 10 states meant to me highlighted by that map? Also if you need to mail anything to West Virginia you'd use "WV" in the address.
I'm surprised no one else ever caught that, but good eye! I've updated the map in the post to correct for Mississippi's abbreviation and to show all the labels on the chart as well. Datawrapper's default settings are not to allow labels to be too bunched up, but I think it looks okay if it's only those few states bunched closely together.
This sounds like a situation of indirect incentives to me, unless there a rule against importing cans and bottles in to California. If not stated explicitly, I don't see how these folks will end up with anything other than lawyer bills, which should be reimbursed by the state. It seems the scam here is that California imposes an extra fee that many people do not recoup because they don't recycle their cans. That's a rather large fund balance held by California.
Since when did we start abbreviating the state of Mississippi with "Yes"? They get 3 letters but poor Massachusetts and Connecticut don't even get abbreviations at all, even though they are 2 of the 10 states meant to me highlighted by that map? Also if you need to mail anything to West Virginia you'd use "WV" in the address.
I'm surprised no one else ever caught that, but good eye! I've updated the map in the post to correct for Mississippi's abbreviation and to show all the labels on the chart as well. Datawrapper's default settings are not to allow labels to be too bunched up, but I think it looks okay if it's only those few states bunched closely together.