Just a couple of thoughts:
The country is scrambling to get out of a recession.
The yellow pages are a source of income for pulp paper industry workers
from the land owners, to the loggers, to the paper makers, to the printers
and binders.
They also keep cash rolling as people buy space in them, giving a living to
the sales people who sell the space, the office workers who process the
purchases of space in the yellow pages, the artists who design the graphics
and put the graphics in a form that can be printed on the pages.
In my own neighborhood, a couple of college students are delivering the
thing at X-much income per copy, and to do that they must buy gas, which
pays other people to produce the gas for their cars. Income from delivery
is helping those people pay for college (leading to better income in the
future on which they'll pay taxes to help us all support our cities, state
and country) Others delivering the pages are retired people whose
pensions could use a little boost, people trying to support their families
by working this job as just one more source of income which they can spend
on goods and services, rolling that money back into the economy, producing
more taxes to help us all.
At the other end, I recycle at least the old books after using them as
(MARVELOUS) flower presses, giving my recycling truck a reason to come
around. Since it's pretty high quality paper, it probably gets repulped to
be recreated into another kind of paper product or byproduct. In this way
we have money going to the guy who picks up my recyclables, income going to
the pulp workers and the corporation that pays them, income going to the
salespeople who sell the recycled paper to people who will fabricate that
into something they in turn will sell and try to make a profit on so they
will pay taxes.
Harvey McKay offers some insight on recycling in his business since he both
sells and buys in that revenue stream.
Now then, what's the reason to want to derail all this again? I'm seeing
a LOT of lives improved, taxes paid, economic benefits (assuming that the
various processes are relatively efficient in manufacturing processes).
If the manufacture process is very dirty, I suggest we'd be better off
lobbying for bills to make the manufacturers clean up their processes
(thereby generating income to the manufacturers and installers of cleaner
processes, along with all attendant sales people, inspectors, yadda)
I suggest that with the many advances in electronics, yellow pages will die
a natural death, just like the buggy whip industry, in a decade or so.
In the mean time, we have an established revenue stream that enhances many
lives along the way and generates a LOT of taxes.
Emilie (who is very left wing but who also believes in the merits of
supporting tax revenue streams to pay for our potholes, our kids'
educations, and our many government services)