The underground economy in Cuba
Taylor, Samuel
The underground is a good measure of the progress and the health of nations. When much is wrong, much needs to be hidden. —Eric Schlosser, Reefer Madness IN MY LIBERAL suburban hometown...
...On $24 per month, with no family members living abroad and sending money and no "extra" income, a university proDISSENT / Winter 2005 n I 5 POLITICS ABROAD fessor with dependents may go days with little food, living in a constant struggle with poverty...
...Alejandro and Sara own a small car, which they drive to a nearby grocery store once a week...
...Employees who were working at the time spent a night in jail...
...Families ate in restaurants and had money for other activities...
...The cited pros and cons of Fidel Castro's forty-five-year-old revolution are always the same: on one side, every Cuban has health care, education, and food...
...Miguel has been selling pirated music to tourists and Cubans for almost twenty years...
...This strategy is limited by how much dough employees can scrape from each customer without provoking consumer complaints...
...He can be reached at samuel.taylor@yale.edu . 20 n DISSENT / Winter 2005...
...He is young, smart, and has a bright professional future...
...without it you're exposed to more persecution by the state...
...He's always had that instinct, he says...
...Even the most dedicated patriot does not want to rat on a neighbor who is selling CDs to make a couple of bucks or stealing some milk from the impersonal state in order to feed her kids...
...the painter steals some paint...
...The organizers have several listeros, or "list men," who dedicate themselves to finding clients...
...Alejandro has many skills, all learned on the job, from languages to plumbing...
...Some of them are unlicensed because they don't want to pay the tax...
...It's a lot easier...
...While the food vendors mentioned above pay about $24 per month in taxes to maintain the license, business owners with paladares must pay over $1,000 per month as a fixed monthly tax...
...Paladares are private restaurants for tourists that are licensed and heavily taxed...
...This research was supported by the Georg Walter Leitner Award, the Sunrise Foundation Research Grant, and the Richter Fellowship...
...But almost all paladares seat more than twelve customers, have a staff of paid employees, and periodically serve lobster and beef...
...Alex sells about two thousand discs every year at a net profit of more than $1,000...
...This worker must be related by blood or marriage to the owner...
...En Cada Barrio Revoluchin On June 21, 2004, Fidel Castro addressed a crowd of 200,000 Cubans from Havana Province in a rally to reaffirm the strength of Cuba's socialism and condemn America's imperialist economic war against sovereign Cuba...
...Money was tight in his family, so he started selling things in school...
...POLITICS ABROAD Five years ago, a friend with equipment asked Alex if he wanted to sell discs...
...However, all of them steal soap, perhaps twenty or thirty bars per day per employee, as much as they can fit discreetly in the clothes they wear...
...In a population of more than eleven million people, at least 130,000 individuals are licensed to have their own business...
...Soviet petroleum was very important for Cuba's economy...
...According to the rules stipulated by the license, paladares cannot have more than twelve seats for customers, cannot serve lobster or beef, and cannot employ anyone who is not a relative of the owner...
...He leaves his house every morning, Monday through Friday, at 7:00 AM and arrives home at 7:00 PM...
...He sells his discs to four vendors...
...The people of Cuba now make and sell wine in their houses, and some have turned their front lawns into food stands, licensed to sell fast and cheap plates of pork, rice, and beans...
...The discs are then sold for $2.50 each, bringing a profit of $0.75 cents...
...Meals cost between $8 and $30 per plate...
...Miguel's state pension from his time served in the Cuban army is just over $3 per month...
...The tiny island was relatively inexpensive for the Soviets to support, and Castro was a savvy political friend...
...Salaries for listeros and organizers are typically based on commission, and the bancuero takes all the remaining profits—or pays the loss if his clients get unusually lucky...
...Many of these underground workers have the most mundane of jobs: they clandestinely make furniture, drive taxis, and sell juice out of their houses...
...One such cubanism is the use of the verb luchar...
...This estimate may be low, as Cubans tend to underestimate incomes because earning money—especially money stolen from the government— is politically controversial...
...He rents two of his rooms, though his license only allows one...
...Visiting many Cubans who rent rooms to tourists, I found these infractions to be quite common...
...Allf luchando they will tell you...
...Others cannot or do not want to take the trouble to become licensed, a multi-month process involving extensive bureaucracy with no guarantee of success...
...After spending some time in Havana, I began to notice alternate sources of income for which many Cubans "fight" on a daily basis...
...when excess materials begin to lose freshness, employees send the message out that backdoor pizzas are available for just $ 1 (half price), and the pizzas sell rapidly...
...Policemen and inspectors are not robots...
...He gives his inspector a fixed sum of money once a week to ignore his three workers...
...He was never caught with a foreigner in his apartment, although everyone in his building surely knew what he was doing...
...Another food stand owner declares his elderly mother as the one worker who helps him...
...Hired assistants and family members often work full time, six or seven days a week...
...letters and sometimes syllables go unpronounced...
...Although his new job brings him less income, he prefers it...
...Before 1989, Cuba enjoyed Soviet subsidies and price supports for exports...
...Before, he was a thief, and now he is a chef...
...sets often sell for more than $300...
...On Sundays, they sometimes pay $10 to use a rooftop pool at a nearby hotel...
...Cuban workers are extraordinarily alienated from their work...
...they both find a way to make a couple of bucks...
...There are also thousands of unlicensed cuentapropistas working clandestinely to provide a service for their clients...
...A man might use it to describe his trials to win over a woman or pass a class in school...
...When I first arrived in Havana, I didn't understand what Cubans meant by la lucha...
...And beef...
...Needless to say, the owners of paladares must be quite a bit more savvy and tactful in working the system than other cuentapropistas...
...Now Miguel sells discs openly, laying out rows and rows of discs on the sidewalk in a high traffic area...
...Their system is so well established that they have a network of people in the neighborhood on whom they can unload pizzas quickly if they need to...
...The game functions on strict street conventions that must not be broken...
...Because of the mismatch between salaries and goods consumed, money is always tight...
...I met a carpenter and an electrician who told me about their jobs...
...It may be hypocritical that "revolutionary" Cubans would steal from an economy that is supposedly their own, but it happens every day in all parts of the island...
...Bancueros administer the game to their customers through a chain of workers so that the only individuals who know the bancueros are two or three trusted "organizers...
...The government does not like the idea of large thriving businesses...
...They were released the next morning, however, and the paladar continued in business...
...For some illegal activity, though, there is a much higher level of risk and return...
...In some professions, licenses were never given out...
...His old state salary five years ago as the head chef of a fancy restaurant was $19 per month...
...He was always on the lookout for how he could save, where he could make some money, where he could find some bread and mayonnaise to sell to his classmates...
...When I met him, he was wearing a fashionable shirt, cargo pants, a shiny watch, and a fat ring...
...he wanted to end the alienation of capitalist production...
...A state job is protection...
...But the money is fast and easy...
...On the same block where Miguel sells, there are four or five other vendors, all with the discs laid out openly...
...Although he started selling discs five years ago, Alex told me that his life as a salesman has much earlier origins...
...It also doesn't hurt to say that your mother is sick and needs milk or medicine...
...The most secretive entrepreneurs sell marijuana, cocaine, and prostitutes...
...Distribution of wealth in Cuba is not governed by training and hard work in a professional career, but by willingness to assume legal and economic risk, ability to manipulate opaque markets, access to bureaucracy and scarce resources, and shrewd economic opportunism...
...These restaurants are elegant and charming, often with ornate decorations and some of the best food in the city...
...Any deviant behavior can be reported by a neighborhood of spies to the police or to higher officials...
...The fine doesn't bother him, but the discs are expensive...
...Although Habaneros may double, triple, or quadruple their official salaries by stealing, they are not making a lot of money...
...The Cuban state, theoretically the only employer, pays an average *All of the names in this essay have been changed to protect those willing to speak about their lives...
...Although Alejandro is now licensed, he nonetheless continues to break rules...
...The fall of the Soviet Union changed all of that...
...Miguel began to buy and sell things on the street—clothes, soap, batteries, candy—anything...
...Walking through Havana, one frequently sees red and blue signs, boasting "In Every Neighborhood a Revolution," with the letters CDR written below...
...A highly skilled worker such as a doctor, engineer, or university professor can make about $24...
...salary of 260 pesos, about $10 a month...
...Unlike Miguel, whose strongest feeling toward authority is resigned indignation, Alex is constantly worried about the police...
...Lists of numbers chosen by clients and revenue collected from those customers must be submitted through the chain of employees to the particular bancuero before the number draw at 6:00 PM...
...Instead, people do it themselves or hire a carpenter or electrician...
...Therefore, according to the namesake of Cuba's experiment, understanding the Cuban experience under Castro necessitates an understanding of Cubans' relationship to their daily work and consumption...
...The more people I asked in Havana, the more ways I discovered to fight (luchar...
...He has a friend with access to 18 n DISSENT / Winter 2005 a printer who makes him music labels for free...
...I spoke with one man who sells small pizzas and plates of rice, beans, and pork outside his house...
...No one is getting rich here...
...In name and rhetoric, the CDR is a way for all Cubans to defend the socialist project through daily actions and choices...
...I LLEGAL ACTIVITY is even more important for other kinds of cuentapropistas...
...Other entrepreneurs have other ways to trick or pacify inspectors, and many may, in fact, follow all the rules...
...At night and on weekends, he dedicates himself to his other job...
...When I questioned him about this law, he sneered and said that no law actually exists in the books, but that being unemployed is unofficially illegal...
...His yearly salary from his state job is about $120...
...Winnings must be paid promptly the next day...
...At one paladar some years ago, inspectors came and discovered illegal employees, illegal lobster, and too many seats...
...He has always excelled in school and is currently working toward a doctorate in a science discipline while simultaneously working a state job as a researcher...
...A cafeteria employee told me that he and other employees sell off the books...
...If you ask a Cuban how he is doing, he may say, Alif, luchando (there, fighting...
...The statement is representative of much of the official rhetoric employed by the regime to engender support...
...He explained to me that returning home was very difficult...
...People mumble...
...In addition to research, he also takes English classes at night, because, he explained, English is very important for a researcher interested in international collaboration...
...The numbers are transmitted by illegal radio or Internet to Cubans across the island who play and organize the game...
...However all entrepreneurs with a different type of restaurant, the paladares, invariably break at least one rule during daily operation...
...He told me flatly: "When I get those fines I don't pay them...
...Karl Marx asserted that human happiness and spiritual well-being are largely determined by one's daily economic activity...
...In addition to all of the logistical and administrative details attended to by any restaurant owner, paladar owners must navigate a stiff bureaucracy that is unfriendly and even ideologically opposed to entrepreneurial endeavors that create substantial class difference...
...Every pizza, for example, is supposed to contain a fixed quantity of dough, sauce, and cheese...
...HOWEVER, EMPLOYEES are clever...
...They may pinch a bit of dough and cheese from each pizza they sell on the state's tab...
...Alejandro is shrewd with money and constantly invests profits back into his apartment...
...At more expensive restaurants, employees leave with more money...
...Most Cubans buy many products that would seem to be out of reach of such a low salary...
...Each neighborhood in Cuba has its own CDR, or Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, the official neighborhood administrative body, in charge of organizing community events and acting as a local link between the people and higher municipal officials...
...There is a guard at the door who knows what's going on, but is content to let the employees make their dollar, albeit for a small bribe...
...They risk being fined and fired, but jail sentences are unlikely for a worker who tweaks the books or sells some soap stolen from the factory...
...In the absence of legal contracts, Cubans have suggested to me that lethal street justice will be administered to any bancuero, listero, or organizador who fails to meet his obligations...
...Furthermore, twenty bars of soap stolen by workers are hardly substantial compared to the cases of soap that some bosses steal, according to my friend...
...There are some obvious examples: workers in tourism maids in hotels, tour guides, and waiters in expensive restaurants—often make tips that dwarf their official salaries...
...The cost of living is much lower in Cuba than in the United States...
...Workers in cafeterias and restaurants have a million tricks...
...The leaders of the CDR are unpaid volunteers, elected by their fellow citizens to lead the neighborhood toward revolution...
...Blank discs in their cases cost him $1.25 if he buys them in the store and around $0.75 if he can find them on the street, where they have surely been stolen from warehouses or stores...
...Another official rule often broken by food stand entrepreneurs is that they can hire only one extra worker...
...embargo, a period of economic crisis ensued that would test socialist Cuba's ability to stand on its own...
...Although I have only anecdotal evidence to support the following claim, I suspect that petty theft exists in almost all parts of the state economy...
...Alejandro and Sara are licensed cuentapropistas...
...The state's inflated prices create an opportunity for unlicensed entrepreneurs to enter the market, sell at a lower price, and make a profit...
...Castro urged support for the communist regime, affirming that "every man should be his own Comandante en Jefe," or commander in chief, as Fidel himself is affectionately called by his citizens...
...During my travels in Cuba, I met a chef at a paladar, a private restaurant for tourists...
...SAMUEL TAYLOR is a senior at Yale University majoring in economics...
...Almost all the Cubans I met were working at secure state jobs that often required little effort...
...Sugar, flour, and rice are often bought illegally from people who work at the bodega, the government outlet for the distribution of food rations...
...Food vendors are required to buy all of their ingredients in stores, and they should be able to show receipts accounting for all ingredients if an inspector happens to stop by...
...Many simply separate their political beliefs from their daily struggle to eat...
...Selling beef and lobster can result in imprisonment of twenty years, a penalty more severe than can be given for murder...
...The ever-changing Cuban language developed a new word for these workers, now called cuentapropistas...
...Very rarely, my friend Miguel, the handicapped compact disc vendor, will receive a large fine of over $50...
...Their daughter receives private instruction in English...
...Although it is hard to know exactly how much money they make, they appear to be living comfortably...
...However, the death of the Cuban National Lottery opened the door for the private Cuban lottery...
...In practice, many of these small entrepreneurs buy cheaper stolen ingredients on the black market...
...Many of the small houses Habaneros inhabit have paintings, tapestries, and wall hangings...
...The owner pays him $500 per month...
...Even poorer is the manual laborer who can't or won't steal, who makes $10 per month or less at a monotonous and unfulfilling state job, perhaps picking up trash on the street...
...This type of scam is essentially petty theft from the government's coffers...
...He has an illegal Internet connection to take reservations from clients...
...Conveniently, she does not leave the house often...
...A doctor makes about $300 per year...
...State employees with highly specialized skills, such as professors, doctors, and scientists, may have the highest official salaries but the lowest consumption opportunities because they don't have any extra income...
...He laughed and said that discs are just to allow him to live with minimum comfort, that his real future is in science, in his research...
...on the other, Castro is an unsavory dictator, commanding absolute control, repressing freedoms, and imposing severe punishments for dissidence...
...Both Sara and Alejandro have professional degrees, but neither has worked for the state...
...I asked Alex why he didn't quit his state job and sell discs full time...
...Once in a while, the inspector's boss will come by, but the bribed inspector always tells this vendor ahead of time so that he can hide his illegal workers and buy all the proper ingredients from the store (so as to get receipts...
...The workers in this industry, like those involved in drugs, prostitution, and employee theft on a grand scale (typically committed by managers), risk a harsh imprisonment...
...the guard has to feed his family as well...
...He earns his living...
...Consequently, cutthroat competition makes jobs in hotels very difficult to get, with long waiting lists, bribes, and special favors sometimes involved in the process...
...In practice, the CDR in most neighborhoods cannot work as a mechanism of state control because of one important characteristic: the organization is social...
...Nevertheless, with the state restaurant full of tourist customers paying $20 per plate, he stole so much at his old job that he made more than he does now at the paladar...
...Workers are to mark down every pizza they sell, and the frequency with which they must request replacement materials should therefore be consistent with the number of pizzas sold and the revenue delivered to the state...
...In theory, the government is supposed to fix houses in need of repair, but one could wait indefinitely for that service...
...He couldn't work a state job because of his physical condition...
...Goods were scarce and expensive...
...This poor Cuban is the "unequal" in the egalitarian society of thieves...
...Nevertheless, employee theft is practically considered a job incentive...
...Additionally, most cuentapropistas do not work alone...
...they have color television sets, stereos, tapes, and CDs...
...They may sell the cattle to the government...
...More often, la lucha is used to describe economic struggle...
...They rent out two rooms for tourists...
...He estimated that he could sell all of his equipment on the street for $1,000...
...the construction worker steals some cement...
...Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, gambling has been strictly forbidden, a capitalist vice to be discarded in the new socialist order...
...The police sometimes arrest Miguel, take all his discs, and fine him $4...
...He studied for a semester at the University of Havana and returned for eight weeks of independent research in the summer of 2004...
...With millions of Cubans dependent on the state, clamoring for employment, higher wages, and social services, the Cuban government used capitalism to confront crisis...
...Food, beer, and fun were all within the average Cuban's budget...
...Both guest rooms have air conditioners, refrigerators, and large elegant windows, which he installed...
...The game is organized by bancueros, very wealthy Cubans with an entrepreneurial knack...
...If you are arrested for illegal activity, your story must be the same: "I have a family to feed...
...two years later he sustained wounds to his leg and returned to Cuba crippled...
...Both men earn very low state salaries, but sometimes work on their own for acquaintances or friends of friends...
...Marx wanted workers to be connected to their work...
...He felt his life no longer had a purpose...
...They always void the fine for him...
...In 1989, he lost his patron, and, with the pressure of the ongoing U.S...
...For others, licenses are simply not available...
...What Happened to Marx...
...Television is more expensive in Cuba than in the United States...
...People who work in hospitals swipe medicine from the pharmacy and sell it just outside the door of the hospital, after the patient has been told at the pharmacy that there is no medicine available...
...he keeps half for himself, and the middleman keeps the other half...
...He makes $100-$200 per month selling discs...
...If the inspector knocks, Alejandro explained, usually no one is home...
...The scams discussed so far allow Cubans to live...
...Alex is quite a different type of CD vendor...
...An alternate strategy is for employees to sell pizzas off the books and replace the materials with dough, cheese, and sauce bought in the supermarket or on the black market...
...In 1982, the Cuban army sent Miguel into battle in Angola...
...Average Cubans cannot earn their living...
...The government licensed Cubans to start independent small businesses...
...As we waited for rice, beans, and pork that we had ordered from a street vendor, Alex explained his greatest fears: "If they catch me with discs and they find all my equipment for production, they can kick me out of school and take everything I've worked for...
...Renting brings in far more income...
...Some paladares have locked doors or doormen to prevent nosy Cubans and state officials from entering unannounced...
...The number of Cubans economically dependent on this nonstate work is much higher than 130,000...
...Officially, beef and lobster are sold only in state stores and restaurants, where they are heavily taxed...
...The employees there officially make about $6 per month...
...Social bonds prevent the enforcement of strict rules...
...They can't apply la ley de vago" (the law of laziness...
...Nonetheless, many state employees in other sectors have a scam that brings in 14 n DISSENT / Winter 2005 POLITICS ABROAD extra income...
...Often they are compromised by bribes and even more often by compassion...
...Families went hungry, washed their clothes with salt, and sold family possessions to survive...
...Illegal lobster is sold mostly to private tourist restaurants, but consumption of illegal beef is common for middle-class Cubans...
...Such is the case with people who sell illegal goods such as drugs, street cigars, and pirated compact discs...
...La lucha is the fight to put food on the table, to have money for beer, to be able to go out on the weekend...
...However, there is much more to life in Cuba than free doctors and prison sentences for a handful of dissidents...
...Some of his most important work is with the state bureaucracy...
...They must fight (luchar), steal, and betray the revolutionary social project, the very project that is supposed to create utopia for them...
...Word spreads quickly, and by 7:30 PM, all Cubans who play can easily learn which numbers were selected and whether or not they have won...
...For a long time he rented without a license...
...One Cuban friend of mine lives in a neighborhood with a soap factory...
...When an acquaintance with a good double tape deck and a large collection of cassettes proposed to Miguel that he sell music to tourists and Cubans, he found his niche...
...All Cubans have access to free health care, education, and food rations...
...Married couples took honeymoons or occasional vacations in nice hotels...
...He pays a business friend $0.50 to burn the blanks with popular music...
...They can monitor each other and strive together for a better future...
...The idea of "fighting" for these things connotes a degree of necessity in obtaining the desired result: people don't fight for what they want...
...Many paladar owners have connections in high places—in fact it may even be requisite for the job...
...He's penniless and disabled...
...Over the years Alex has invested in his own equipment...
...From hustlers on the street to teachers giving illegal private English classes DISSENT / Winter 2005 n 17 POLITICS ABROAD to $50,000-dollar-a-year businesspeople, the entrepreneurial spirit lives in socialist Cuba...
...Each CD carries about $1 in profit...
...All foods and products in these establishments are inventoried and occasionally randomly inspected to prevent employee theft...
...They have no incentive to do their job with efficiency or care...
...he now has a computer with a CD burner, a scanner, and a good color printer to make labels...
...This essay aims to explore that relationship in and around Havana.* The Cuban language is one of the most difficult Spanish dialects for non-native speakers...
...It's made up of neighbors and friends, and neighbors and friends are malleable, adaptive, and flexible...
...The higher-ups in the factory, the bosses, engineers, and bureaucrats, surely know what's going on...
...All the sellers look older than fifty, and most have physical difficulties...
...Handicapped people are exempt...
...Although salaries in Cuban pesos remained constant, prices soared, and salaries in real terms plummeted...
...Furthermore, the state jobs are a convenient source of supplies...
...Those who steal from their jobs are not necessarily disaffected from the government...
...One employee from a cheap state restaurant told me that between tips and various tricks with the restaurant books, all employees—the doorman, kitchen workers, and waiters alike—leave every night with $10 or more in unofficial salary...
...Every man, woman, and child is meant to serve the socialist project with daily actions...
...From a more cynical point of view, the CDR is an institution of insidious state control...
...State inspectors constantly monitor the numbers of cows on private farms...
...There is one man with no legs, one very obese woman, and one blind woman: When I asked Miguel if you have to be handicapped to sell openly in this contained area, he said that it does provide some protection...
...Cuba has developed an extensive slang...
...Even with nearly two million tourists visiting Havana every year, not everyone can work in tourism...
...Nevertheless, the salaries do not satisfy many of the needs of average Cubans...
...In practice, most food vendors hire more than one full-time employee, and often employees are not family members...
...he maneuvers around the rules, the required paperwork, and the official agencies with great tact...
...Eric Schlosser, Reefer Madness IN MY LIBERAL suburban hometown outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Cuba makes for good cocktail conversation...
...In three or four days of independent work, both of these men sometimes make more money than they earn in a month with their government jobs...
...According to a person in management, a successful paladar can bring over $50,000 per year to the owner in net profits...
...La lucha, or the fight, is the daily struggle to get by, to pass, to succeed...
...DISSENT / Winter 2005 •I9 POLITICS ABROAD Beef and lobster are considered luxuries— unnecessary for the Cuban diet and good moneymakers for state coffers...
...The game is based on Venezuelan lottery numbers, selected at 6:00 PM every night...
...The food rations typically last about half the month and include very little meat...
...Cubans who own private cattle farms must use the cows only for milk...
...Because he is still studying, he makes just $10 per month...
...Entrepreneurs have different ways of dealing with the inspectors...
...The importance of working hard for the socialist state fades before the intense reality of a constant struggle to afford what are considered basic and necessary goods...
...Another important underground market is for consumers with a taste for games...
...These workers are uncountable...
...The 1990s were a bitter time...
...The living room has plush couches and framed paintings...
...Customers can choose from the assortment laid out or can make particular requests to be picked up at a later date...
...When I asked why they didn't quit their jobs and seek full-time independent work, they dismissed the idea, explaining that independent work was illegal and not always available...
...They have extra money to spend on a vacation once a year and to pay for a cleaning lady who comes daily to their house...
...Nevertheless, the chances of being punished for illegal activity are low...
...New Money Alejandro and Sara Rodriguez live in a multiplestory building close to some enormous tourist hotels and a commercial strip that features two movie theaters, several bars with live music, restaurants, and other stores...
...Cuentapropistas During the 1980s, Cubans enjoyed relative economic prosperity...
...He some16 n DISSENT / Winter 2005 POLITICS ABROAD times serves his guests lobster and beef, which is strictly prohibited...
...Illegal Cuentapropistas For every one of the 130,000 licensed cuentapropistas, there may be one or more unlicensed ones...
...Many Cubans I've talked to agree...
...There is no other way to live...
...they fight for what they need...
...One employee who worked there at the time thinks that the only possible explanation for the lax punishment is that the owner is well connected and his pockets are full of gifts for inspectors and other officials...
...Plumbers, taxi drivers, barbers, mechanics, nannies, artisans, and many more types of workers began to work on their own account or propia cuenta...
...In practice, another woman is the real hired hand, but she slips out a back door if an inspector comes, leaving only the mother in the kitchen...
...After selling five or six slightly small pizzas, they might have enough materials to make a pizza for sale off the books...
...He goes to the office where the fine must be paid and explains to the attendant that he doesn't have the money...
Vol. 52 • January 2005 • No. 1
