Rationing the Necessities

Remember Elaine Benes begging for a square of toilet paper during an episode of Seinfeld?

Her situation is being repeated on Coney Island these days, only it isn't Jerry's date in the next stall from whom she must beg some two-ply.

From the New York Post.

The city is so hard up for cash that it's rationing toilet paper in women's public restrooms -- to the point where bathroom attendants are doling out a few measly squares per patron -- along the world-famous Coney Island boardwalk.

The Post witnessed stone-faced Parks Department employees leave toilet-paper dispensers empty last week and instead force astonished female beachgoers to form "ration lines" in the bathrooms.

Regina Ballone, 25, of Brooklyn visited a boardwalk bathroom at West 16th Street Wednesday and was "grossed out" at the thought of someone else handling her toilet paper.

"Never in my life have I experienced anything like this," she said. "I walked toward a stall, and a bathroom attendant stopped me by shouting, 'Hey, mami! There's no toilet paper here,' and she whipped out a big roll for me to grab some."

That socialist paradise that is New York is coming face to face with the realities of an economy that makes war against job providers--well, that is all private sector job providers because the government can apparently still afford pay people to hand out a square here and a square there when it cannot afford to stock up the wall dispensers.

Sheesh.

h/t Publius Forum