Forget Congress, Mike, look at the evidence.
Since 2007, the
vending industry took a dump from 1.4 million locations with sales of $47 billion to 1.3 million locations with sales of $43 billion.
This is a 7 percent drop in locations and 9 percent drop in industry revenue. During this period, the number of
vending operators dropped by 14 percent.
Since 2000, self-service (wands) took a dump from 32,500 locations with sales of $2.7 billion to 25,500 locations with sales of $1.3 billion.
This is a 22 percent drop in locations and 52 percent drop in industry revenue.
In two years, the number of vendors that upgraded to bill acceptors increased from 17.5 percent to 29 percent. The number that upgraded to remote monitoring increased from 10 percent to 14 percent.
In 2007, one million quarters went through
vending machines every five minutes. Today, this number is 860,000. Moreover, annual demand for quarters in self-service dropped from 10 billion to 5 billion.
Hence, you get legislation like H.R. 1719 to reduce the cost of producing a commodity in decline.