[Rain Man]

I paid 8 cents for an elevator ride yesterday in Salvador, Brazil. This apparently funds the salaries of the ticket taker, security guards, and the elevator operator who pushed either the "1" or the "2", depending on direction.

But before you think it's a bad financial model, recognize that I also paid 8 cents for the trip back down.

The back story is actually kind of interesting. There's a 100-foot cliff down the middle of the city, so someone (I'm presuming the city) built a small building that consists of nothing but four elevators. If you need to go from the low part to the high part, you either buck up the 8 cents and take the elevator or you walk up a long road at the end of town that according to at least one guidebook "is just asking to be robbed". I weighed the pros and cons and invested the 16 cents for the round trip.