Word: literal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Yesterday, shipments of Diet Coke in liter and two-liter sizes were sent to some local markets, including the Store 24 chain...
...commodities are supposed to be rationed. In fact, rationing is an excuse for black-marketeering. Clergymen in charge of militiamen's committees run the rackets. Their agents sell a pack of cigarettes at $5, about five times the official price, under the counter. Car owners, restricted to 40 liters (10.56 gal.) of gasoline a month, pay about $21 for an extra 20-liter (5.28 gal.) ration coupon, a hefty addition to the $7.50 cost of the gasoline. Every child is allowed a ration of 1 lb. of powdered milk a week, which is not enough. For the rest, parents...
...have helped to raise the cost of living 108% over the past year. All-night queues in front of butcher shops have largely disap peared, because many people cannot afford to buy meat at the new prices. Virtu ally all necessities are rationed: one bar of soap, a half-liter of vodka and 3 lbs. of sugar per person per month. This fall, pre schoolers will be allotted one pencil, one eraser and one paintbrush for the entire year...
...most likely proposal is a doubling of federal excise taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, which currently are $1.66 on a .75-liter bottle of whisky and 8? on a pack of smokes, and a boost in the 4?-per-gal. federal tax on gasoline, perhaps to 9?. Doubling the 2% federal tax on interstate telephone calls might be included as well. A portion of the added revenue, estimated at $9.2 billion, would be turned over to the states, but the size of their share is still uncertain...
...state's pricing system, designed to hold down food costs to consumers, was a blueprint for bankruptcy. The state was paying farmers 10 zlotys for a liter of milk that it sold in stores for 4 zlotys. Live hogs were bought from farmers at 130 zlotys per kilogram and sold as butchered pork at 70 zlotys per kilogram. Farmers bought bread and fed it to their livestock because it was cheaper than the wheat it was made from. Price subsidies began absorbing a staggering one-third of the national budget...